AMF France v. C, A, D, E, F, B and G (insider trading, 2018)

Judgment entered

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On 24 October 2018 the Commission des sanctions found that a financial journalist told two contacts which takeover rumours his newspaper column would run on Hermès and Maurel & Prom, and that the contacts and two others traded CFDs and spread bets ahead of publication. It fined five people EUR 345,000 in total and cleared two others over an Arkema article.

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

€345k

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 (first section) decided the case on 24 October 2018. The AMF had opened inquiries from June 2012 into Arkema, then Maurel & Prom, Christian Dior and Hermès, and notifications of grievances went to seven individuals in December 2016.

The notifications alleged that E, who wrote a daily market report for a newspaper, passed C and G the fact that articles relaying takeover rumours on Hermès (8 June 2011) and Maurel & Prom (12 June 2012) were about to be published; that G passed both items to F; that C and F used them, and C passed the Hermès item to D and an Arkema-related item to D, A and B, who used them. All of the trading was in spread bets and contracts for difference, bought before the articles and closed soon after.

The Commission found that a forthcoming newspaper article relaying a bid rumour can be inside information, held the Hermès information, with its reported EUR 350 price, to be precise and likely to move the price, and found the communication and use charges made out on the Hermès and Maurel & Prom items, including C's passing the Hermès tip to D. It held that the Arkema item, an article reporting unspecified approaches by a rival, was too vague to move the price of Arkema shares in a market already speculating on a bid, so it was not inside information, and put A and B out of the case.

It fined C EUR 150,000, D EUR 80,000, F EUR 55,000, E EUR 40,000 and G EUR 20,000, and ordered publication on the AMF website for five years, non-anonymised except for those cleared and third parties.

This record does not show the traders' profits, and it does not show whether the decision was appealed.

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. 2018-10-24 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.