AMF France v. A and B (insider trading, 2006)

Judgment entered

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On 28 September 2006 the AMF Commission des sanctions found that B and A, hospital and university colleagues of a consultant to drug developer X, sold their shares on 22 September 2003, a day before X announced that its main partner had ended their contract (shares fell 26 per cent). It fined B EUR 75,000 and A EUR 11,000.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€86k

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 decided the matter on 28 September 2006. A COB-AMF inquiry opened on 15 December 2003. Grievances were notified on 26 January 2006 to B, a hospital gastroenterology head, and to Mme A, a doctor in his unit, over their sales of shares in X, a pharmaceutical research company listed on the Nouveau Marché.

They were charged with using inside information on 22 September 2003, B by selling 55,000 shares at EUR 5.31 and A 6,900 shares at EUR 5.50.

The Commission found that X's partner Y had ended its partnership on 19 September 2003 and that the contract made up about 90 per cent of X's revenue, so the termination was precise, non-public and decisive; X announced it on 23 September 2003 and the share fell 26 per cent from EUR 5.30 to EUR 3.95. It found the sales were massive, simultaneous, through the same bank, and unexplained, and that B and A worked closely with C, a member of X's advisory committee (A's husband), who was close to X's scientific head D. It concluded they had received the information and used it knowingly, avoiding losses of EUR 74,800 (B) and EUR 10,695 (A, who re-bought the same number of shares four days later at about EUR 4.10). It did not retain the charge that the information came to them in a professional capacity.

It fined B EUR 75,000 and A EUR 11,000 and ordered publication.

The record does not show how the information actually reached them; the Commission inferred it from the circumstances. The decision does not say whether it was later reformed or annulled on appeal. The AMF anonymised the respondents.

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. 2006-09-28 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.