The dissemination of a bogus Vinci press release and its impact on the share price on 22 November 2016 prompted the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) to work with all relevant parties to consider how such incidents might be prevented, or at the very least how their market consequences might be limited.
In addition to its current investigations to determine the full extent of responsibility for this incident, the AMF quickly initiated discussions focusing, in particular, on the following areas:
- the various mechanisms used by issuers to disseminate information (primary information providers authorised by the AMF, the press, other channels, etc.) and certain arrangements put in place in other countries to study the tightening of best practice by issuers;
- checks carried out on information disseminated and, in particular, those carried out by Euronext and by the various media (information providers, etc.); and
- the calibration of ‘safety mechanisms’ designed to automatically halt trading in a share if its price varies excessively.
On this occasion the AMF held discussions with a number of stakeholders: news agencies, SBF 120 companies and their representatives (CLIFF, the French association of financial communication professionals), information providers authorised by the AMF, the market operator Euronext and a number of European regulators.
The AMF also initiated discussions with each of the primary information providers authorised by it, to assess the robustness of their safety systems and, where it deemed necessary, to ask them to put in place action plans.