AMF France v. X, A, B, C, D (false or misleading information, 2009)

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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In December 2009 the AMF's Commission des sanctions fined a listed company 50,000 euros, its chief executive 30,000 euros and its financial-communication manager 5,000 euros for misleading disclosure about research subsidies and for selectively briefing analysts, and cleared the company's two statutory auditors.

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

€85k

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 Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF, France) decided the case on 10 December 2009. The respondents were a listed company (X), its chairman and chief executive (A), its financial-communication manager (B) and two statutory auditors (C and D), published under letters.

The notifications alleged first that X and A had booked in the company's accounts to 30 September 2006 and 31 March 2007 research and development subsidies for the 2006/2007 year that had not yet been authorised by the European Commission, raising the subsidies line by 33.1 per cent, and that the two auditors had allowed that inaccurate information to be published. They alleged secondly that X, A and B had failed to release simultaneously to the public inside information, namely a significant gap between market expectations and the company's internal operating-margin position, which B had given to financial analysts in the days before 5 and 6 October 2006 without any embargo.

The Commission upheld the charges against X, A and, for the selective-disclosure charge only, B. It noted that although B was not an officer, he had taken it on himself to pass the information to analysts. It weighed the multiplicity of breaches against the fact that they had not seriously affected the market, and imposed 50,000 euros on X, 30,000 euros on A and 5,000 euros on B, with publication that preserves the individuals' anonymity. It put the two auditors out of the case.

This record does not show how the market reacted, whether any trading occurred on the information, whether the decision was appealed, or the identity of the company, which is anonymised. It is a disclosure and false-information case rather than one of trading or price manipulation.

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

1. 2009-12-10 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.