AMF France v. E, A, B, C and D (insider trading, 2008)

Judgment entered

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On 22 May 2008 the Commission des sanctions found that a fund manager had bought shares in the electricity retailer Poweo in January 2006, ahead of the announcement of its partnership with the Austrian utility Verbund, using information given to him by the company's chairman. It fined him EUR 200,000 and a second buyer EUR 5,000, and cleared three others.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€205k

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 first section of the Commission des sanctions decided this matter on 22 May 2008, after an investigation opened in May 2006 and notifications of grievances sent on 27 September 2007. The issuer was Poweo, an electricity and gas supplier whose shares traded on the Alternext market; on 19 January 2006 it announced a strategic partnership with Verbund involving a reserved capital increase at EUR 25 a share, after an offer made on 21 December 2005 and accepted by the board on 6 January 2006.

The AMF alleged that five individuals had used inside information about the imminent signing of the partnership. E was accused of buying 17,520 shares in the days of 4 and 11 January 2006 for a Cayman Islands fund that he alone managed and benefited from. A, B, C and D were accused of buying between 800 and 3,000 shares each on 17 and 18 January 2006, the days before the announcement.

The Commission found that the information was inside information from 21 December 2005. It relied on the account the company's chairman first gave investigators, that he had telephoned E on 23 or 24 December 2005 to ask his advice on the proposed partnership and its price, and found E's purchases established. It found A's purchase of 800 shares established, and held that for B, C and D the indicators did not show that only possession of the information could explain their trades, so those allegations were dismissed. For C, for example, it noted the order had a price limit, executed over two days, and was consistent with his usual investing.

It imposed a EUR 200,000 penalty on E, whose fund made a gain of EUR 62,934, and EUR 5,000 on A, who kept the 800 shares and whose benefit was put at EUR 1,264. B, C and D were cleared.

This record does not show that the company chairman faced any proceeding in this decision, or whether the decision was appealed.

This library tags the matter as insider trading. 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 one technique 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.

• Insider trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2008-05-22 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.