AMF France v. Getco Europe Ltd (price manipulation, 2016)

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 July 2016 the AMF Commission des sanctions fined the trading firm Getco Europe 400,000 euros over flickering orders by its algorithms on seven large French shares across Euronext, BATS and Chi-X.

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

€400k

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 1st section of the Commission des sanctions decided this case on 8 July 2016. The AMF's market surveillance division had reported suspicious behaviour by the trading firm Getco Europe Ltd, and the AMF opened an inquiry in May 2011 into its trading in seven large French shares: Crédit Agricole, BNP Paribas, AXA, Alcatel-Lucent, Vallourec, Société Générale and Total. A single grievance was notified on 3 June 2015.

The AMF found that Getco's algorithms placed what it called flickering orders, meaning orders that oscillated between two price limits or were entered and cancelled at once, with many more on the BATS and Chi-X platforms than on Euronext Paris. It alleged that the orders gave false or misleading indications of supply, demand or price, and that badly configured algorithms gave a fictitious picture of the market, which could amount to manipulation.

The Commission sanctioned Getco and rejected a request that it apply a rule on the confidentiality of the decision. It imposed a financial penalty of 400,000 euros, taking account of the firm's modest turnover in recent years.

The record does not show how many orders were involved, and it does not show whether the decision was appealed.

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. 2016-07-08 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.