The American agency Bloomberg saw its appeal rejected by the Court of Cassation on Wednesday after its conviction on appeal in the dispute between it and the Financial Markets Authority (AMF) following the affair of the false Vinci press release.
“The press agency did not act in compliance with the rules of its profession since it should have, before broadcasting its press release, questioned the authenticity of the information received,” explains the Court of Cassation in a press release to justify its stop.
The court notes that the Bloomberg agency “did not take any advantage from this broadcast nor acted with the intention of misleading the market”, but should have “carried out checks, in the presence of unusual content on the form and unlikely in substance.”
At the end of 2019, the AMF, the French stock market watchdog, imposed a sanction of 5 million euros on the American agency specializing in economic and financial information for having relayed the content of a false press release concerning the French construction group Vinci.
The sanction was reduced to 3 million euros in 2021 by the Paris Court of Appeal.
In November 2016, Bloomberg was the first media outlet to publish erroneous information, based on a fraudulent press release announcing the revision of the Vinci group’s consolidated accounts due to alleged irregularities leading to a net loss and the alleged dismissal of its director. financial.
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Bloomberg deleted the report less than ten minutes later, then broadcast a new report, which denied the information.
But this very short period of time was enough to cause the Vinci share price to plunge by 18.28%, before it recovered to close down 3.78%.
The damage to investors was estimated by the AMF at 6.5 million euros for investors.