The Autorité des Marchés Financiers judged that the company had not respected the rules protecting the interests of its investor clients.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
The addition is salty. The Sanctions Commission of the Financial Markets Authority (AMF) inflicted a heavy fine on Tuesday January 3 to the H2O asset management company and its two founders for violation of the rules for the protection of the interest of investors . The fine amounts to 75 million euros for H2O to which are added 15 million for Bruno Crastes and 3 million for Vincent Chailley, in accordance with the requisitions taken during a public session at the end of November 2022.
m. Crastes, director general at the time of the facts, also prohibited from exercising the activity of manager for five years, while H2O and Mr. Chailley, then director of investments, received a blame.
” Liquidity defect “
The Commission underlined “the damage suffered by investors resulting in particular from the blocking of their savings” and “the severity of the shortcomings”. She retained all the grievances accused in H2O as part of her investments in financial titles from the Tennor group, linked to the German businessman Lars Windhorst.
For more than three years, until the suspension of H2O’s funds concerned in August 2020, the company acquired securities corresponding to private tennor debt for 2.25 billion euros. The AMF notably criticized the “liquidity lack” of these instruments, the fact that they “did not fall within the framework of the investment policy set by the funds of the funds” and the fact that H2O did not have “sufficient information” to invest “reliably”.
H2O announced on Tuesday before the publication of the sanction, which it would reimburse “in the coming days” a first part of the blocked funds. These had been subscribed by thousands of savers, essentially French.