AMF France v. X, Z and Y (marking the close, 2008)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 5, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, in a single reading of the French decision; an independent second reading of 60 of the AMF records agreed on every field for 54 and on the core fields for 59. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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On 24 January 2008 the Commission des sanctions found that an investment firm and its head of trading had pushed up the closing prices of six small technology and media shares on the last trading day of 2004, and that the firm had also breached conflict and reporting rules on a large share placement. It fined the firm EUR 200,000 and two executives EUR 60,000 and EUR 40,000.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€300k

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars. This regulator states penalties in EUR. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

The second section of the Commission des sanctions decided this matter on 24 January 2008, after a banking-supervisor inspection report of December 2005, a further report in October 2006 and notifications of grievances sent on 29 December 2006. The respondents were an investment firm, called X in the published decision and since renamed, and two executives: Y, who ran financial analysis, and Z, who ran trading and sales.

The grievances covered two episodes. The first was a placement in early 2005 of a block of about 1.07 million shares of the listed IT services group Steria bought from Bull, where the AMF alleged price manipulation, insider dealing, missing watch-list and information-barrier controls, an analyst conflict of interest and a failure to report the purchase. The second was year-end trading on 31 December 2004 in six small technology and media shares, alleged to be manipulation.

On the placement the Commission rejected the manipulation, insider-dealing and watch-list allegations, but found that the firm lacked proper information-barrier procedures, that a research note was published without disclosing the conflict created by the placement, and that the block purchase had not been reported to the AMF. On 31 December 2004 it found that clients asked X for purchases at the highest possible prices without needing full execution, that X's staff built a method to do it, and that orders were mostly executed in the closing auction at 14:00. It found X raised limit prices on some orders just before the close, for example to EUR 40.92 on one share and EUR 53.95 on another, and that these trades moved prices. It held the manipulation breach established against X and Z.

It fined X EUR 200,000, Z EUR 60,000 and Y EUR 40,000 (EUR 300,000 in all), taking into account the changes made after a new group took control of X. The decision was published in anonymised form.

This record does not show the identity of the clients that asked for the trades or whether the decision was appealed.

This library tags the matter as marking the close and price manipulation. The tagging is ours, not the regulator’s.

For the regulator’s own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the decision.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with 2 techniques in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Marking the close — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Price manipulation — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2008-01-24 Commission des sanctions decision

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• AMF decision page
• Decision (PDF, French)

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added October 5, 2026. submit a correction.