AMF France v. A, B, C, D, E (insider trading, 2010)

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.

Report an error in this record (amf-fr-san-2010-14-insider-trading-2010) by email

In May 2010 the AMF's Commission des sanctions fined two valuation experts, a lawyer and her father a total of 228,000 euros for trading Genesys shares ahead of West Corporation's takeover bid in early 2008, after the advisers learned of the plan through their work. It cleared a sixth person, a friend of one of the experts.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

€228k

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 27 May 2010. The charges had been notified in 2009 to five people, published as A to E.

A and B were employees of a firm acting as independent expert to value Genesys in the context of a takeover bid by the US group West Corporation. C was a close friend of B who worked for a bank. E was a lawyer at the firm that regularly advised Genesys on the bid, and D was her father. The notifications alleged that A bought Genesys shares on five dates between 17 December 2007 and 1 February 2008, that B bought between 31 January and 7 February 2008 and passed the information on, and that E passed on information about the bid and D traded on it.

The Commission found the insider-dealing charges made out against A, B, D and E, and rejected those against C, whose trading it found was not shown to rest on any tip. As to D, it found that E had received an email on 21 January 2008 setting out the timetable for the bid, that D, after phoning her on 22 January, bought 55,000 Genesys shares on 23 January and 25,000 more on 18 February, the day before the offer was announced, and that his explanation did not account for a purchase of about 27 per cent of the portfolio. It concluded only possession of the information could explain the trades.

It imposed 45,000 euros on A, 3,000 euros on B, 150,000 euros on D and 30,000 euros on E, and put C out of the case.

This record does not show how the Commission weighed the individual trades beyond the figures above, whether the decision was appealed, or the identities of the respondents, which are anonymised. It also does not show any action by the Commission against the firms involved.

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. 2010-05-27 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.