AMF France v. A, B and C (insider dealing, 2013)

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 12 April 2013 the full Commission des sanctions fined a consultant EUR 35,000 for buying GEODIS shares ahead of the SNCF Participations takeover bid, on top of a EUR 60,000 criminal fine for the same trades. It deferred its ruling on a bank managing director and his cousin, charged over EUR 8 million of GEODIS trades.

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

€35k

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), sitting in plenary formation, decided the case on 12 April 2013. The decision is anonymised: the respondents appear as A, B and C.

On 6 April 2008 SNCF Participations, already holding 42 per cent of GEODIS, announced a friendly takeover bid at EUR 135 a share, a premium of nearly 33 per cent, and the shares rose more than 30 per cent on resumption of trading. The AMF opened an investigation in April 2008 after trading rose on 3 April. The notifications of grievances, sent in June 2011, alleged that A, a senior manager at a firm appraising the bid price, bought 590 GEODIS shares for EUR 44,194 using inside information; that C, a managing director at a bank co-presenting the bid, passed the information to his cousin B; and that B bought shares and contracts for difference worth EUR 8,000,224.

The Commission found the breach made out against A, noting that it was committed in the course of his professional work and shortly after an earlier insider-dealing sanction on another stock, on which he had paid EUR 45,000. It recorded that the Paris criminal court had convicted A on 5 September 2012 of professional insider dealing in the GEODIS shares and fined him EUR 60,000. It imposed a EUR 35,000 sanction, in addition to that fine, and ordered anonymised publication.

On the grievances against C and B it did not rule, and ordered further investigation before deciding. It ruled on them on 18 October 2013 (SAN-2013-22), in a separate decision recorded separately, where the respondents carry different anonymising letters.

This record does not show whether any appeal followed, or A's gain.

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. 2013-04-12 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.