AMF France v. Pharnext, M. Daniel Cohen and M. David Horn Solomon (false or misleading information, 2025)
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.
In January 2025 the Commission des sanctions fined the biotech company Pharnext EUR 500,000 and its two successive chief executives EUR 200,000 and EUR 100,000 for failing to disclose US regulator feedback on its lead drug candidate and for publishing misleading statements about it between 2019 and 2021.
The record
| Agency | AMF (France) |
|---|---|
| Release number | SAN-2025-01 |
| Date filed | 2025-01-20 |
| Date resolved | 2025-01-20 |
| Court | Commission des sanctions (AMF, France) |
| Status | judgment |
| Asset class | equities |
| Instruments | Pharnext shares |
| Venue | Euronext Growth |
| Criminal parallel | No |
| Defendants | Pharnext ; Daniel Cohen ; David Horn Solomon |
| Techniques | Misleading issuer disclosure |
What was ordered
- Civil penalty
- —
- Disgorgement
- —
- Prejudgment interest
- —
- Total relief
- —
- Alleged gain
- —
- Penalty as published
- €800k
What is alleged to have happened
The Commission des sanctions of the AMF decided the matter on 20 January 2025. The respondents are Pharnext, a biotech company listed on Euronext Growth, its co-founder Daniel Cohen, chief executive until April 2020, and David Horn Solomon, chief executive from April 2020 to November 2022.
The notifications alleged two failures to disclose inside information promptly: the US Food and Drug Administration's request for an additional study of the candidate PXT-3003, inside information by 10 April 2019, and the regulator's non-agreement on a special protocol assessment, inside information by 28 October 2020. They also alleged that press releases and shareholder letters published from April 2019 to February 2021 were false or misleading.
The Commission held that the first information was inside information from 10 April to 31 August 2019 and the second from 29 October 2020, and that Pharnext failed to disclose both as soon as possible. It found manipulation by false or misleading information proved for the press release of 24 April 2019, the shareholder letters of 20 June 2019 and 29 October 2020 and the press releases of 1 and 4 February 2021. It attributed the 2019 breaches to Mr Cohen and the later ones to Mr Solomon.
The fines were EUR 500,000 on Pharnext, 200,000 on Mr Cohen and 100,000 on Mr Solomon. Publication was ordered without anonymisation.
The record does not show the price effect of the statements, whether anyone appealed, or any criminal case.
This library tags the matter as misleading issuer disclosure. 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.
- Misleading issuer disclosure — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
Timeline
- 2025-01-20 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.
Related actions
Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.