AMF France v. M. A (insider trading, 2023)

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.

Report an error in this record (amf-fr-san-2023-04-insider-trading-2023) by email

In March 2023 the Commission des sanctions fined an individual, published as M. A, EUR 700,000 for buying derivatives on a large listed industrial group the day before each of two results announcements in 2020, using advance knowledge of better-than-expected figures.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

€700k

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 AMF, first section, decided the matter on 13 March 2023. The respondent is published as M. A. The issuer is published as X, a company on compartment A of Euronext Paris specialising in electrical management and automation.

The notification of grievances alleged that M. A used two items of inside information: the better-than-expected 2019 annual results and 2020 margin guidance, published on 20 February 2020, and the better-than-expected first-half 2020 results with new guidance, published on 29 July 2020. It alleged that he bought derivative instruments on X's shares on 19 February and 28 July 2020, the days before each release.

The Commission held that the first information was inside information by 18 February 2020 at the latest and remained so until 20 February, and that the second was inside information by 27 July 2020 at the latest until 29 July. It found that M. A used them to buy 305,700 derivative instruments on 19 February 2020 and 140,000 on 28 July 2020, in breach of articles 8 and 14 of the Market Abuse Regulation. It noted that once the fact of the trade is established, the respondent must show that he did not use the information.

It fined M. A EUR 700,000 and ordered publication of the decision, non-anonymised for him, for three years.

The record does not show how M. A came by the information, the profit made, whether he appealed, or any criminal case.

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. 2023-03-13 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.