Altaroc Partners & Its Leaders Fined €1.3 Million Over Compliance Failings

Key Takeaways

• Total Penalties: The AMF’s Enforcement Committee fined Altaroc Partners €600,000 and its senior executives Maurice Tchenio (€500,000) and Patrick de Giovanni (€200,000), totaling €1.3 million.
• Procedural Failures: Altaroc lacked operational procedures for investment and divestment decisions and failed to verify whether lenders to its funds were authorized to conduct such transactions.
• Marketing and Retrocessions: The company’s marketing materials contained shortcomings, and retrocessions of management fees to distributors could not be shown to benefit clients.
• AML/CFT Gaps: Regulators found that Altaroc had not systematically conducted required due diligence on fund assets and liabilities for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing purposes.
• Executive Accountability: The AMF held both Tchenio and de Giovanni personally responsible for the breaches, highlighting the regulator’s focus on senior management responsibility.

Deep Dive

France’s markets watchdog has come down hard on Altaroc Partners, handing the asset management firm and two of its top executives fines totaling €1.3 million after uncovering a pattern of governance and compliance missteps.

The AMF’s Enforcement Committee said on September 15 that Altaroc (once known as Amboise Partners) failed to put in place even basic safeguards to ensure its funds were being managed responsibly. The firm was fined €600,000, while chairman Maurice Tchenio and chief executive Patrick de Giovanni were personally ordered to pay €500,000 and €200,000, respectively.

At the heart of the case was the absence of operational procedures governing how investments and divestments were made. The AMF found Altaroc had not bothered to check whether lenders to its funds were authorized to make such transactions, calling into question whether it was conducting its business “honestly, fairly and professionally.”

That wasn’t the only gap. Investigators pointed to weak marketing materials and criticized the firm for paying retrocessions, kickbacks of management fees to distributors, without showing that clients got any added value in return.

Red Flags on AML

Even more troubling to regulators was Altaroc’s patchy approach to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing checks. The Committee concluded the firm had not consistently carried out required due diligence on the assets and liabilities of the funds it managed, an omission that cuts to the core of financial system integrity.

Unlike many enforcement actions that stop at the corporate level, this one went straight to the top. Both Tchenio and de Giovanni were held personally accountable for the firm’s lapses, underscoring the AMF’s willingness to pin responsibility on senior leadership rather than chalking issues up to institutional failings alone.

An appeal remains possible, but the French regulators expect asset managers to back up their promises of professionalism with real systems, controls, and documented diligence. For firms marketing themselves to investors as trusted stewards of capital, the AMF’s message is that credibility is earned through compliance, not branding.

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