AMF France v. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H (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.

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In November 2010 the AMF's Commission des sanctions fined four individuals a total of 1.41 million euros for trading Clarins shares on advance knowledge of the Financière FC takeover bid in 2008, gave a warning to the person who leaked it, and cleared three others.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€1.4m

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 18 November 2010. The charges had been notified in January 2010 to eight individuals, A to H.

The shares of Clarins were suspended on 26 June 2008 at 43.72 euros and, the next day, Financière FC filed a simplified takeover bid (OPAS) at 55.50 euros a share, which led to a squeeze-out in September 2008. The AMF's market surveillance had noticed unusual purchases before the announcement. The notifications alleged that A, outside his normal duties, passed information about the bid to others, and that B, C, D, E, F and H used it, with D and E also passing it on and G alleged to have told H.

The Commission found the charges established against A, B, D, E and F, and put C, G and H out of the case. For D it recorded a personal gain of 195,101 euros and a further 426,077 euros gained by relatives who bought on a joint decision. It recorded gains of 9,616 euros for B, 298,795 euros for F and 192,943 euros for E, who passed the information to F. A had not used it himself and acted through imprudence rather than design.

It imposed financial penalties of 300,000 euros on D, 450,000 euros on E, 650,000 euros on F and 10,000 euros on B (lowered for his circumstances), and gave A a warning without a penalty because he was unemployed.

This record does not show how the information reached A beyond what the decision states, whether the decision was appealed, or why C, G and H were cleared beyond the operative outcome. The respondents are anonymised; the company and the bidder are named in the decision.

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. 2010-11-18 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.