AMF France v. X, A, B, C (false or misleading information, 2010)

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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In April 2010 the AMF's Commission des sanctions fined a listed company 20,000 euros and its chief executive 10,000 euros for publishing inaccurate figures in accounts for a 2005 equity swap and, for the company, for under-reporting share buy-backs. Most of the other charges, including on merger-document information, were rejected and two individuals were cleared.

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

€30k

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 Commission des sanctions of the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF, France) decided the case on 1 April 2010, after a procedure opened following complaints from minority shareholders about the terms of a merger. The respondents were the merged company X, its chief executive A, and two other individuals, B and C.

The notifications alleged that the merger document and several press releases were inaccurate, imprecise or misleading, that two sets of accounts had given inaccurate information on the valuation of an equity swap over 4.3 per cent of another company's capital, and that the company had failed to make required declarations of dealings and share buy-backs.

The Commission found the false-information charge made out only for the accounts at 30 September 2006 and 30 September 2007, which either did not value the equity swap or valued it by reference to the merger enterprise value rather than fair value under IAS 39. It also found that only 186,570 of 600,617 shares bought back in June and July 2005 had been reported as required. It held the other charges not made out and attributed the breaches of the absorbed company to X as its successor.

It imposed 20,000 euros on X and 10,000 euros on A, and put B and C out of the case.

This record does not show whether the market was affected, whether the decision was appealed, or the identities of the companies, which are anonymised. It is an accounting and disclosure case rather than one of trading or price manipulation, and it is included because the Commission treated the accounts breach as the publication of false information.

This library tags the matter as misleading issuer disclosure. 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.

• Misleading issuer disclosure — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2010-04-01 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.