(News Bulletin 247) – The Financial Markets Authority imposed a financial penalty of 25 million euros on Rallye, accusing it of having disseminated false or misleading information.
The Financial Markets Authority (AMF) announced Monday that it had imposed a fine of 25 million euros on Rallye, parent company of the struggling distributor Casino, “for having disseminated false or misleading information likely to fix the price of Rallye shares at an abnormal or artificial level.
The AMF also imposed a fine of 1 million euros on Franck Hattab, the general director of Rallye, found responsible in this same case of market manipulation.
The AMF college – its prosecuting authority – accuses Rallye and Franck Hattab of having disseminated on 11 occasions, between March 8, 2018 and May 15, 2019, “false or misleading information on the financial situation of Rallye ” in 14 communication media.
Information on results from 2017 and 2018
This information, which concerned Rallye’s 2017 annual results, its 1st half 2018 results and its 2018 annual results “gave investors a more favorable image of its liquidity situation than it actually was”, added the AMF in a press release.
They described “without nuance, this situation as ‘solid’ or ‘very solid'”.
However, the group’s liquidity situation “depended to a greater extent than what Rallye’s financial communication suggested on the evolution of the price of the Casino share, which was very volatile and was subject to persistent downward pressure”, he said. -she explained.
This erroneous information was “likely to have an impact on the market’s perception of its financial situation”. And Casino’s stock market price has, according to the AMF, evolved “at a level higher than what it would have been in the presence of accurate and non-misleading information”.
The AMF Sanctions Commission found that “Rallye knew or should have known that this information was false or misleading” and that these actions were “attributable” to Franck Hattab, the general manager and head of financial communications of Rallye at the time of the facts.
The representative of the AMF college Anne-Claire Hercot-Le Bihan had demanded in July “an exemplary sanction”, 25 million euros from Rallye and 2.5 million euros from Franck Hattab.
The Casino group has 50,000 employees in France and around 150,000 in Latin America.
(With AFP)
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