AMF scandal: Shocking revelations in a damning financial report!

It’s not so easy to be flawless! Even when one carries the grandiose name of the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) and enjoys the status of the financial watchdog in France. Recently, the Court of Auditors pointed a finger at the AMF for budget management issues in 2023. The details are plenty!

The AMF in the red: poor figures for the financial watchdog

📈Confrontée à une transformation majeure de son environnement, l’AMF gagnerait selon la Cour à finaliser la modernisation des outils informatiques et à allouer des moyens humains et financiers pour ces nouvelles missions.

Lire le rapport 👇 https://t.co/rtU3Qt5N4z

— Cour des comptes (@Courdescomptes) March 18, 2024

The AMF, although being the French equivalent of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States, cannot escape the scrutiny of the Court of Auditors, the police of the police, so to speak. The SEC itself is often reprimanded by institutions more powerful than it, such as lawmakers who order it to block any new form of exchange-traded funds or ETFs.

But let’s get back to the matter at hand or rather to the Autorité des Marchés Financiers: last Monday, the Court of Auditors published an unflattering press release on the matter. Here’s an overview of the public finance controller’s less than laudatory comments.

In the world of finance, even the watchdogs can get lost in the meanders of numbers! Because since 2017, the AMF seems to have navigated through troubled financial waters, according to the Court of Auditors. Indeed, the report accuses the regulator of plunging into a critical situation, becoming even unsustainable by the end of 2022. The criticism abounds, notably on investments made without sufficient guarantees of available means. IT projects and renovations of premises have been singled out.

The numbers don’t lie: the AMF’s cash reserves plummeted from 58.5 million euros in 2017 to a mere 3 million euros in the 2023 budget. A financial nosedive that could have led the AMF straight to insolvency, had the State not decided to step in on time by increasing the resources made available to the agency between 2022 and 2024.

A lesson to remember: even financial institutions that are supposed to watch over the market can sometimes find themselves swept up in the turmoil of figures and risky investments.