Swiss bank UBS AG may have lost up to US$350 million because of technical glitches on the NASDAQ stock exchange the day Facebook went public, reports says.
CNBC and the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported UBS is now mulling legal action against NASDAQ.
UBS spokeswoman Karina Byrne confirmed the bank lost money due to NASDAQ technical issues when the social networking firm’s stock began trading on May 18.
Byrne declined to disclose the amount, but said it was “not material” to the bank. She said UBS has not taken legal action, but is weighing its loss-recovering options.
“Given the size of our US equities business and our role as a major market maker, UBS was affected by these issues, as we believe other market participants may have been,” Byrne said in a statement.
NASDAQ declined comment on the reports on Friday.
The US$350 million figure dwarfs previous estimates for the combined losses resulting from technical glitches at NASDAQ during Facebook’s first day of trading. This week, the exchange said it would hand out US$40 million in cash and credit to reimburse investment firms.
Facebook Inc’s initial public stock offering was one of the most widely anticipated market debuts in years, but it quickly turned chaotic.
The opening was delayed by half an hour. Then, technical problems kept many investors from buying shares in the morning, or selling them later in the day, or even knowing whether their orders went through. Some investors complained they were left holding shares they did not want.
According to CNBC and the Journal, UBS placed an order for 1 million shares, but this was not confirmed and so repeated the order several times and ended up with much more stock than it intended.
Facebook’s stock originally priced at US$38 and closed that first day at US$38.23, disappointing those hoping for a first-day surge. NASDAQ has said it was embarrassed by the glitches, but that they did not contribute to the underwhelming returns.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS