AMF France v. A, X, Y, Z, W (price manipulation, 2011)

Judgment entered

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In May 2011 the AMF's Commission des sanctions fined a wine-and-spirits company's chief executive 100,000 euros and four group companies a total of 75,000 euros for manipulating the company's share price in 2008 and 2009 with group cash while it was under court protection, and for misstating the group's holding of its own shares.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€175k

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 26 May 2011. The respondents were the chairman and chief executive, M. A, the listed company X, and three group companies, Y, Z and W, which were notified of the charges in March 2010.

The AMF opened its inquiry after X's accounts raised doubts about it continuing as a going concern and its shares fell 30 per cent in one day in June 2008. X and several subsidiaries then entered a court-supervised safeguard procedure. The inquiry looked at purchases of X's own shares from 30 July 2008 to 16 March 2009 and at what the market was told. The notifications alleged that on 7 January 2009 the company's website reported 230,341 shares held, or 9.17 per cent, when it held 221,945 and its subsidiaries held a further 613,000 or so, so the group held 834,833 shares, or 33.26 per cent.

The Commission found the disclosure inaccurate. It found the price manipulated on eleven dates between 31 July 2008 and 16 March 2009: A, using the accounts of X and the three subsidiaries, placed many buy orders above the best limits, some before the opening and later cancelled and some shortly before the close. It cited his messages about supporting the stock, bluffing the market and pulling the price up. The purchases were made with group cash during the safeguard procedure, outside the rules for a buy-back programme, and were not disclosed to the market or the AMF.

It imposed 100,000 euros on A, 30,000 euros on X, and 15,000 euros on each of Y, Z and W, noting that A believed he was defending the group.

This record does not show the amounts spent on the purchases, the size of the price effect, whether the decision was appealed, or the identities of the companies, which are anonymised. Roughly 604,492 shares attributed to one subsidiary were the largest block omitted from the disclosure.

This library tags the matter as 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 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2011-05-26 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.