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The 3 Billion Dollar Typo

Posted by Zonk on from the this-is-why-coffee-is-a-daily-requirement dept.

Rand310 writes "Mizuho, the world's second largest bank based in Japan, with total assets of nearly the GDP of France (around 1.2 trillion USD) accidentally sold 610,000 shares, valued at $3.1 billion... for 1 yen each. A 27 billion yen loss would almost match Mizuho Securities' group net profit of 28.1 billion yen for the financial year ended in March, though... the incident would not threaten the brokerage's financial stability. FYI 1 yen is about .83 cents. Yesterday one share was selling at $5,065, today you could theoretically have bought 610,000 shares for $.0083 each. An expensive switch of variables."

5 of 398 comments (clear)

  1. You've got to admire the Mizuho execs... by The+Angry+Mick · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The company made a horrendous mistake and yet, there you see two executives bowing apologetically and taking responsibility on the day it happened .

    I have to wonder how a U.S. bank would have handled such a mistake?

    --

    I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.

    1. Re:You've got to admire the Mizuho execs... by HardCase · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Something very similar happened to me in a previous job. I made a mistake that cost the company several thousand dollars and had the potential to alienate a good customer. I told my boss what I did and we decided what to do to fix it. His boss wanted me fired. My boss' response was to tell her that the way that he saw it, the company had just provided me with several thousand dollars worth of training and he wasn't about to throw that investment away.

      I guess it worked out - my boss retired a year or so later and I got his job. And it's a lesson that I've never forgotten (and, fortunately, only had to use once).

      -h-

  2. Trading typos are hardly that rare... by The+Grassy+Knoll · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A Lehmann Brothers trader keyed in a £300m sell instead of £3m in 2001 and cost the company £20,000 (in fines, cos he moved the FTSE downwards with such a large sell order).

    And a Bear Stearns employee typed in $4bn instead of $4m in 2002, again moving the index (thsi time the Dow Jones) down.

    Mostly though these positions are unwound by agreement between the parties. I don't understand why that didn't apply here.

    .

    --
    They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
  3. Re:Would be nice, but not really... by Anopheles · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The ones that REALLY piss me off are the ones for Windows patches. If you install an update that "requires" a reboot, and you hit "reboot later", it will nag you (by popping up another modal box with the same question) every 3 minutes. And there's no "cancel" or "stop annoying me" button. You can't stop the nagging.

    What's worse is that the default button on this dialog box is the "Reboot now" button.

    So I'll be typing in an email or a posting to something, and after 3 minutes are up, it will suddenly pop up the nagbox into the foreground, just in time for me to hit spacebar after finishing a word. In a blink of an eye, the computer forces every program to end without prompting to save and reboots...

    I can understand and can live with crashes. but that... That behavior was PLANNED.

  4. Re:Data Validation by madaxe42 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually it's a market depth view. Each column displays the buy and sell side of the market, and the associated depth & volumes.