AMF France v. Bloomberg LP (false information from a fake press release, 2019)

Judgment entered

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On 11 December 2019 the Commission des sanctions found that Bloomberg's Paris desk published newswire items on 22 November 2016 repeating a forged Vinci press release, without checking it, so that Vinci's share price fell 18.28 per cent before the items were withdrawn. It fined Bloomberg LP EUR 5,000,000. The decision does not say who forged the release.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€5m

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 11 December 2019, after a hearing on 15 November. The AMF opened an inquiry into Vinci's financial information and shares in November 2016, then split out the Bloomberg strand in 2018. The single grievance was notified to Bloomberg in December 2018.

The grievance alleged that between 16:06:04 and 16:16:32 on 22 November 2016 Bloomberg published information that it should have known was false and likely to set Vinci's share price at an abnormal or artificial level. The items repeated a press release received at 16:05 and styled as a Vinci announcement of a review of its 2015 and first-half 2016 accounts, citing serious accounting irregularities by the finance director.

The Commission found that two Bloomberg journalists published the items within about a minute, too fast to read a 590-word release or check its details, and did not seek confirmation even though the release arrived during trading hours, was very serious in content, and gave a web domain that was not Vinci's real one. It noted that a colleague then warned them of an earlier forged release about Vinci in 2014, that the items were withdrawn and corrected between 16:14 and 16:16, and that the share price had fallen 18.28 per cent. It found that Bloomberg should have known the information was false. It rejected Bloomberg's arguments based on journalistic freedom and the request for a reference to the EU Court of Justice.

It fined Bloomberg LP EUR 5,000,000, citing the complete lack of checks before publication, the 18.28 per cent fall and losses of about EUR 6.5 million for investors who sold on the news, and ordered publication on the AMF website for five years, non-anonymised. It could not take Bloomberg's finances into account because Bloomberg did not provide them.

This record does not show who forged the press release, and it does not show whether the decision was appealed. The respondent was the publisher, not the forger.

This library tags the matter as fake press releases (the forged release was the source of the false information). 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.

• Fake press releases — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2019-12-11 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.