AMF France v. X, Y, A, B, C, D and E (marking the close, 2005)

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.

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On 16 September 2005 the AMF Commission des sanctions found that a listed issuer, Y, and its secretary general E had had broker X push up the issuer's own share price at the close on 27 February 2001 so that Y could buy a 6.3 per cent block above market. It fined Y EUR 500,000, X EUR 300,000, E and X's trader C EUR 50,000 each, and warned X and its staff.

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

€900k

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 second section of the Commission des sanctions of the AMF, with substitute members, decided the matter on 16 September 2005 after a hearing that day. Grievances had been notified on 18 June 2004 to firms X and Y and to A, B, C, D and E, following a COB inquiry opened on 15 March 2001 into trading in the shares of the listed issuer (the group Y) and its own-share buy-back.

The facts concerned a plan by Y to buy back a 7.5 per cent block from a shareholder at a price of EUR 84 to 88, which the COB board did not endorse on 27 February 2001. On that day, in the last minutes and at the closing fixing, the price rose from EUR 79 to EUR 83.60 (5.8 per cent); the next day a 2,500,000-share off-market trade was declared at EUR 83.60, of which 2,150,000 shares were bought by Y from the shareholder.

The Commission found that the closing-price rise was engineered through buying orders by broker X, acting on the issuer's behalf and partly outside the official buy-back programme, to lift the price artificially before the block was priced. It held E, who ran the programme end to end and told the broker to avoid a fall back after the price was inflated, responsible for the manipulation, and held Y responsible for his acts. Y had not met the conditions for the buy-back safe-harbour and produced no real evidence of legitimate purpose. It also examined an earlier episode of 16 February 2001, in which a trader at a second broker entered a 5,000-share buy at EUR 79 behind an electronic broker before a 450,000-share block for Y at the same price; it cleared A and B, since A acted as a facilitator on his employer's instructions and B was absent.

The Commission imposed EUR 500,000 on Y, EUR 50,000 on E, a warning and EUR 300,000 on X, a warning and EUR 50,000 on C, and a warning on D, and ordered publication.

The record does not show how responsibilities were divided between the individuals at X beyond the sanctions, and the decision does not say whether it was later reformed or annulled on appeal. The AMF anonymised the respondents; the listed issuer is called Y in the list of respondents and Z in parts of the text.

This library tags the matter as marking the close and price manipulation. 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.

• Marking the close — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Price manipulation — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2005-09-16 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.