AMF France v. D, A, Company Z, B, C and firms X and Y (misleading financial information, 2012)

Judgment entered

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On 19 July 2012 the Commission des sanctions found that a listed television producer overstated its 2006 revenue by EUR 5 million and carried its rights catalogue at an unsupported EUR 209 million, and fined the company, its two senior officers and its two audit firms and signing partners EUR 2.1 million in total. On appeal in January 2014 the Paris Court of Appeal set aside the sanctions on the audit firms and partners (EUR 300,000), leaving EUR 1.8 million.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€1.8m

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 Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) decided the case on 19 July 2012. The decision is anonymised: the listed company appears as Z, its founder and chairman of the supervisory board as D, the chair of the management board as A, and the two audit firms and signing partners as X, Y, B and C.

Z produced and distributed television programmes and was listed on Euronext Paris. Its 2006 consolidated accounts carried its catalogue of audiovisual rights at EUR 209 million. Two experts retained by a prospective buyer valued the catalogue at between EUR 40 million and EUR 80 million in late 2007. Z sought a court-appointed conciliator in March 2008 and was later placed in insolvency proceedings and liquidation.

The notifications of grievances, sent in May 2010, alleged that Z, A and D gave the public information that was not accurate, precise and sincere. The alleged failings were booking about EUR 5 million of fictitious 2006 revenue on two contracts that were not performed, valuing the catalogue on unreasonable revenue assumptions, not disclosing the sensitivity of the key assumption, and not disclosing breaches of bank covenants. The auditors were charged with communicating false information by certifying the accounts.

The Commission found that EUR 5 million of 2006 revenue, about 3.5 per cent of group turnover and roughly half of net profit, had been booked on two contracts that did not stand: one was cancelled by an agreement D signed but did not pass to the accounts team, and the other sold rights the group did not hold. It also upheld the grievances on the catalogue valuation, except that it did not find the catalogue shown to be manifestly overvalued, and on the failure to reclassify debt after covenant breaches. It held the auditors liable for not checking the company's assumptions, one partner having conceded they were probably optimistic. It rejected the grievance on disclosure of the key assumption's sensitivity and the grievance on the 2007 annual report.

It fined D EUR 1.6 million, A EUR 100,000, Z EUR 100,000, firm X EUR 150,000, firm Y EUR 50,000, and B and C EUR 50,000 each, EUR 2,100,000 in total, taking into account that A could not in practice have overridden D's decisions.

The linked document is the Paris Court of Appeal judgment of 30 January 2014, which reproduces the Commission's decision. The court put the two audit firms and their signing partners out of the case, removing EUR 300,000 of the EUR 2.1 million, and rejected the appeals of the two senior officers, so the penalty recorded here is the EUR 1.8 million that stands. The Commission also upheld an insider-trading and disposal-declaration breach against one individual alone. This record does not show investor losses or any criminal follow-up.

This library tags the matter as misleading issuer disclosure and 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 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.

• Misleading issuer disclosure — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Insider trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2012-07-19 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.