Responsible for ensuring “the protection of savings » and at “good functioning” markets, the Financial Markets Authority (AMF) has found itself in a financial situation in recent years ” critical “, due to failure to correctly anticipate its own investments. This is the observation drawn up by the Court of Auditors in observations published Monday March 18. An independent public authority, the AMF, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in November, had 115.9 million euros in resources in 2023, an envelope supplied mainly by contributions from listed companies and market participants that it supervises. .
This budget has increased by 21% since 2017, which made it possible to cover ” roughly “ the increase in operating expenses, notes the Court of Auditors, but not the investment needs, the surge of which forced the authority to draw on its cash flow. Thus, while it amounted to 54.4 million euros at the end of 2016, this fell to fall, at the end of 2022, to 22 million, while the authority had to finance nearly 20 million euros of investment the following year. “The financial situation had become unsustainable and the AMF would have potentially found itself in a situation of cessation of payments if the State had not significantly increased the amount of the ceiling imposed on its resources”, underlines the Court. This ceiling, imposed since 2012 on all independent authorities with their own resources, has in fact been increased for the benefit of the AMF by 2.5 million euros for 2023 and 6.5 million for 2024, or by 9%. in total.
The Court of Auditors particularly singles out the organization of the AMF’s support functions, starting with finance and IT, by mentioning the “saturation” of certain teams and “a problem of organization and concentration of missions”. But above all she criticizes the management of two major investment projects launched in recent years, which she considers “insufficiently controlled”.
“Design and management defects”
The first, which aimed to reorganize the rented premises in the center of Paris in order to reduce the occupied surface areas and costs, showed in September 2023 a total cost of 16.9 million euros, a third more than estimated during its launch in 2021, for results considered inconclusive, with rental savings representing only one million euros per year.
The second project in question, ROSA, launched in 2016, concerns the implementation of a new IT tool for exchanging data with asset managers. It suffered several delays and its cost, initially estimated at 42.1 million euros, gradually slipped due to “design and management defects”, according to the Court of Auditors, to reach 53 million, an amount which is undoubtedly not final.
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