AMF France v. Y, A, B, D and C (insider trading, 2020)

Judgment entered

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On 13 November 2020 the Commission des sanctions found that three individuals bought shares of the company behind Grand Marnier in February and March 2016 using inside information about a family stake sale likely to lead to a takeover bid, and that two others passed the information on. It fined the five between EUR 25,000 and EUR 100,000 each, EUR 275,000 in total.

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

€275k

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 13 November 2020, after a hearing on 28 September. The AMF had opened its inquiry into the shares in July 2016, and notifications of grievances, with Italian translations for two respondents, were sent in January 2019 to five individuals.

The notifications alleged that information about a planned sale by a family group of a stake in Société des Produits Marnier Lapostolle (SPML), likely to lead to a follow-on bid, was inside information from 26 January 2016. Y, D and A were accused of using it when buying shares on 8 February, 23 and 24 February, and 4 to 11 March 2016. B was accused of passing it to Y, and C of passing it to A.

The Commission found each charge made out. Its findings turned on the timing and unusual character of the purchases, the personal links between the people involved and weak explanations, which together it treated as proving possession and use. It found D's inclusion on an insiders list had not been shown to be known to him, and so did not rely on it.

It fined A EUR 100,000, Y EUR 50,000, B EUR 50,000, C EUR 50,000 and D EUR 25,000, and ordered publication on the AMF website for five years, non-anonymised.

This record does not show the profits made, the identity of the source, or 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. 2020-11-13 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.