Nasdaq Apologizes For Horrible Handling Of Facebook IPO

Nasdaq chief executive Robert Greifeld admitted on Sunday that the Nasdaq’s systems erred in the handling of Facebook’s IPO on Friday morning and afternoon.

While Facebook shares increased by +0.61% before the end of trading on Friday the company’s stock trades were delayed by half an hour while Nasdaq computer technicians attempted to fix errors they had missed during systems testing leading up to the history IPO launch.

By the end of day many orders were cancelled and some large hedge funds, mutual funds and other institutions were left wondering for hours at times if their buys were accepted by Nasdaq systems. Delays up to two hours left investors wondering what buy and sell prices they had achieved.

According to Greifeld:

“This was not our finest hour.”

The chief executive also said he was “humbly embarrassed” by the IPO’s launch and promised that his team would create better standards for future launches as more tech company’s choose the Nasdaq over the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

While issues were immediately realized Nasdaq officials are calling the launch a “success” and say they never planned to cancel the IPO at the last moment.

The Facebook IPO was not the first technical glitch for an exchange in 2012, in March the BATS Global Markets IPO was botched by its own software systems.

Even the long established NYSE has run into some recently problems involving technical issues, in April the NYSE Euronext electronic Arca market canceled orders for data-mining company Splunk after transactions were made and accepted after the stock was already halted.