Swiss Bank Threatens to Sue NASDAQ Over Facebook IPO

jfruh writes "On the day of the Facebook IPO, the NASDAQ's trading systems suffered multiple failures and couldn't confirm buy orders for several hours. Big banks buying shares for their funds and customers placed multiple orders as a result, and bought more Facebook stock than they intended to as a result. NASDAQ has agreed to set up a fund to compensate them for their losses, but apparently this isn't enough for Swiss bank UBS, which is threatening legal action."

Re:what if they did it...

[Penguinisto]

Well, judging by UBS's saber-rattling, we know who got left holding a big bag of Zuckerberg-fueled hype, now don't we?

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying if you pushed the elevator button and got no response (no light, nothing) you wouldn't push it again? You would just stand there with your dick in your hand hoping that the press registered?

I thought this was already happening

[ackthpt]

But then, when you buy stock in a company with no real product and it tanks to about 50% it's IPO value, you can only blame yourself and your silly Bay of Pigs attitude towards business.

Re:Dear Swisstards

[Anonymous Coward]

As a swiss i'm a bit offended by this post. You're right about it beeing UBS' fault.
But the rest is PURE BS.

We have some privacy laws. Like forbiding any government (including ours!) to snoop around our finances. That's it. There will always people who abuse this. But if you want to live in a police state with no privacy fine. I'm a regular citizen, pay my taxes and i still think it's a good thing the gov can't snoop around my bank accounts.

Re:Boo hoo!

[mysidia]

If the system is down, don't keep submitting orders.

Exactly. Absence of a confirmation is not confirmation that there is no order.

In that case, the transactionally correct action would be to cancel the original order, and receive confirmation of the cancel, before attempting to place another order.

Of course... if Facebook stock had gone up instead, then they would complain that more orders were cancelled and not resubmitted than they intended.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was charged per press I would seriously consider some dick holding time.

Re:Dear Swisstards

[sexconker]

Cry more. Swiss banks knowingly and willingly aid and profit from serious crimes.

Re:Dear Swisstards

[Anonymous Coward]

Privacy laws are for everyone, good or bad - but we cant let the bad ones cause us to accept a police state

Re:LOL

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

So you're saying if you pushed the elevator button and got no response (no light, nothing) you wouldn't push it again? You would just stand there with your dick in your hand hoping that the press registered?

If I ran the risk of possibly buying a thousand shares of facebook stock every time I pressed the button, I'd start to give the 'dick in hand' strategy some serious consideration...

Re:LOL

[NemosomeN]

UBS' customers were hammering the "buy" button, UBS forwarded that along to NASDAQ, NASDAQ responded with "BRB," UBS' customers canceled all of the button mashing trades, NASDAQ delivered all of the trades, without regard to those that were canceled. UBS is right that they shouldn't be on the hook for the losses, since it was NASDAQ that caused the problem. Or at least they would have been right, if they hadn't signed a contract limiting NASDAQ's liability to a pittance. Regardless, clients were made whole, and the only ones who will be harmed by this should have known their protection from this type of loss was limited.

Re:LOL

[smellotron]

No, I want $1000 dollars of FB. If that's 40 shares at the time I place the order and 20 shares at the time the order is processed 4 hours later because Nasdaq screws up, I get 40 shares and a bill for $2000.

Allow me to introduce you to the limit order [sec.gov]. You want to buy $1000 of FB and your screen/broker/google-finance says that it's $25/share? Send your limit order for 40 shares @ $25. If the price jumps up (regardless of the reason) you won't get filled and you'll have to try again later, but at least you're not stuck with a mystery bill for your purchase. If you sent a market order [sec.gov] for 40 shares... well... I hope it was a good learning experience.