AMF France v. Deutsche Bank AG London Branch (layering, 2017)

Settled

✓ 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.

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In May 2017 the AMF agreed a settlement with Deutsche Bank AG London Branch over a trader who allegedly ran 136 to 151 order-book sequences using large hidden orders and cancelled passive orders on French shares; the bank agreed to pay EUR 300,000.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

€300k

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 AMF published an administrative settlement (accord de composition administrative) with Deutsche Bank AG London Branch, dated 29 May 2017. This is not a contested sanctions hearing. The agreement took effect only once the AMF Collège validated it and the Commission des sanctions homologated it; the document gives the signing date but not the homologation date, so the signing date is used here.

The AMF opened an investigation in December 2013 after repeated alerts involving Deutsche Bank and covering about forty French shares from January 2011. It examined the account of a trader on the bank’s secondary equity desk who also executed client orders.

The agreement describes a four-step pattern between 31 July 2012 and 11 December 2013: placing a large, partly hidden (iceberg) order on one side; adding large passive orders on the other side to suggest strong interest and push other participants’ limits; trading against the imbalance at the improved price; then cancelling the passive orders. Investigators counted between 136 and 151 such sequences and estimated gains or avoided losses for the bank’s clients of EUR 6,596 to EUR 44,979 across 71 stock-days. The AMF said these orders could give false or misleading signals on supply and demand and set prices at an artificial level.

The bank agreed to pay EUR 300,000 to the Treasury within thirty days of homologation. The agreement records that the Parquet national financier told the AMF on 18 November 2016 that it did not wish to bring a prosecution against the bank for these facts, so no criminal case is stated.

What the record does not show: the agreement describes conduct that the person "could" or "would" have committed, so it records allegations and undertakings, not a finding of breach, and it is not styled as a fine. It does not show whether any later challenge occurred.

This library tags the matter as layering, spoofing. 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 2 techniques 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.

• Layering — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Spoofing — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2017-05-29 Settlement agreed (homologated by the Commission des sanctions)

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 settlement page
• Settlement (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.