AMF France v. A, X (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.

Report an error in this record (amf-fr-san-2010-27-false-information-2010) by email

In October 2010 the AMF's Commission des sanctions fined an Alternext-listed online-advertising company and its founder-chairman 15,000 euros each for press releases that omitted the effect of a refund guarantee on its business model. It did not uphold the late-disclosure charge, whose share fall of about 30 per cent came after the guarantee cost was revised.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

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 28 October 2010. The respondents were the company, X, and its chairman and chief executive, M. A, who held about 74 per cent of it. The charges were notified in December 2009.

The company's shares traded on Alternext. In 2008 it postponed its general meeting, asked for a trading suspension and announced that the potential cost of its refund guarantee to advertisers, put at 1.6 million euros in the 2007 accounts, had risen to 3.2 million euros, cutting net profit from 3.9 to 2.8 million euros. The share fell by almost 30 per cent on 12 and 13 June 2008. The notifications alleged that the prospectus and later press releases gave obsolete, incomplete and misleading information on the business model, and that the guarantee's negative effect was disclosed late.

The Commission upheld only the charge about the press releases of 2007 and 2008, from July 2007: they continued to suggest that revenue was independent of whether advertised goods sold, without mentioning the refund guarantee that contradicted this. It held this attributable to both the company and A, who was named as responsible in the prospectus. It did not retain the late-disclosure charge, finding that the then-estimated cost of 1.6 million euros was not shown to be price-sensitive. It imposed 15,000 euros on each respondent.

This record does not show whether the information affected investors' decisions beyond the price fall described, whether the decision was appealed, or the identity of the company, which is anonymised. It is a false-information and disclosure case rather than trading or price manipulation.

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. 2010-10-28 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.