This is the first time that a French bank will be tried in France for facts related to the 2008 crisis.
In November 2007, in a press release on its results for the third quarter of the year, Natixis indicated that the risks carried by the bank on "subprime", a type of mortgage loan distributed in the United States, were "limited".
The crisis will ultimately be expensive for the young bank, which will see its price collapse, from 19,55 euros when it was floated on the stock market at the end of 2006, to less than one euro per share in 2009.
It was at this time that small shareholders led among others by the Association for the Defense of Minority Shareholders (Adam) seized justice. The organization filed a complaint for "dissemination of misleading information" and "presentation of inaccurate accounts".
Only two press releases from 2007 were ultimately indicted in 2017, ten years after the events. The referral to court concerns only one of the two, the one relating to the results of the third quarter, the other having resulted in a dismissal of the examining magistrate.
The hearings will last six half-days, between March 29 and 31, then from April 6 to 8, at the Paris judicial court.
If justice judges that Natixis has deliberately underestimated its exposure to deceive the market, the bank risks a fine of up to 7,5 million euros, a low amount in relation to the net profit of the establishment which s 'amounted to 100 million euros in 2020, and two billion in 2019.
To this fine, could be added the demands of the civil parties.
When announcing the referral to court in 2019, the listed subsidiary of BPCE group recalled that "the emergence of this crisis was then for it, as for all banks in the market, an unprecedented situation of which it was impossible to anticipate the chain consequences ".
"In this context, Natixis considers that it has provided the public, in all sincerity, with the information it had on its exposures, as and when their underlying risks are identified," the bank added.
The Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), which had considered this communication, had decided that there was no need to prosecute.
The subprime crisis tipped the United States into what was then the worst recession since the Great Depression of 1929 and had global repercussions.
Natixis had been severely affected, showing a net loss of 2,8 billion euros in 2008 and 1,7 billion euros in 2009 before starting a recovery.
But the course of the bank has never returned to its pre-crisis levels. Today, the Natixis share is worth around 4 euros, ie the price announced in February by the parent company BPCE, which wishes to buy back all of the securities from the market and exit its subsidiary from the Stock Exchange.
When it was introduced in 2006, 2,8 million individuals had bought Natixis shares and the operation was at the time described as successful.
"They did not stop communicating to feed their stock market price, but people were not informed that they held a security which in reality had a strong potential of decline", had criticized in 2017 the President of Adam, Colette Neuville.