AMF France v. A and B (insider trading, 2017)

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 18 December 2017 the Commission des sanctions found that an employee of a broker's French branch passed details of a fund client's pending buy orders to a friend, who placed matching sell orders and was filled against them, on seven trading sessions. It imposed fines of EUR 450,000 and EUR 496,000 and a 10-year ban on the employee.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€946k

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 (second section) decided the case on 18 December 2017, after a public hearing. The inquiry had been opened in January 2013 into trading in a list of French and foreign shares from 2010 onward, and the notifications of grievances were sent to the two individuals in April 2016.

The notifications alleged that A, an employee of the French branch of a UK broker, passed B inside information on the main features (securities, volumes and prices) of forthcoming buy orders from a fund client, Dexia LSRA. B was alleged to have used it by placing sell orders at prices in line with those buy orders, so as to be executed against them. A was also accused of abusively exploiting information on his client's pending orders. The notifications covered 36 sessions between December 2010 and January 2013.

The Commission found the allegations proved only for seven sessions: Alten (8 November 2011), Boursorama (19 September), Havas (28 December 2011), Klépierre (2 November and 7 December 2012), Rallye (23 February 2012) and Nexity (29 January 2013). It relied on the close links and telephone contacts between the two men, on B's sell orders being placed within minutes of the fund's orders in nearly all of the 36 cases, and on B's departure from his usual investment pattern. It treated A, as a broker employee, as a primary insider presumed to know the information was privileged, and held that handing a client's order details to an outsider was an abusive use of pending-order information.

It fined A EUR 450,000 and barred him from executing orders for third parties for ten years, and fined B EUR 496,000. It ordered publication of the decision on the AMF website for five years in non-anonymised form.

This record does not show whether the decision was appealed, and it does not show the profit B made. The decision's own reasoning on the other 29 sessions is not summarised here.

This library tags the matter as insider trading and front-running. 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 2 techniques 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.
• Front running — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2017-12-18 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.