Slashdot Mirror


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."

6 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. legal action because it is falling? by HaaPoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    if the price was going up, would they be returning the stock for a refund?

  2. Re:Dear Swisstards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:LOL by CheshireDragon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Probably wouldn't last too long. I am sure some people would start to question why your dick was out in the first place.

    --
    "That's right...I said it."
  4. USB has it's own legal problems by Required+Snark · · Score: 5, Interesting
    USB has legal problems that are far more serious them NASDAQ's inability to make timely trades. I can't help but wonder if this suit is partly an attempt to distract people from how much trouble USB is facing.

    USB, along with Barkley's and RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) are all under investigation for rigging LIBOR. This is potentially the largest currency fraud in the history of the world. Literally 100 of TRILLIONS of US dollars may have been influenced by rigging interest rates.

    http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-07-28/news/32906786_1_libor-global-benchmark-interest-rates-credit-card-rates

    Soon, the trading had crossed to the euro rate markets, according to the settlement documents filed in the Barclays investigation. And by 2007, traders at RBS and UBS were seeking to influence the yen rate market, according to documents filed in 2011 in Singapore's High Court and in Canada's Ontario Superior Court.

    Traders at Barclays are believed to have participated in manipulating the rate for the dollar and the rate for the euro known as Euribor, according to documents filed in the Barclays settlement last month.

    RBS and UBS traders are a focus of the global investigation because of their alleged involvement in seeking to influence yen-denominated rates.

    Two RBS traders in London, Brent Davies and Will Hall, are alleged to have agreed to help a trader at UBS, Thomas Hayes, to manipulate yen Libor, according to court documents filed by the Canadian Competition Bureau.

    So USB getting press about how unfair NASDAQ is acting could be an attempt at a smokescreen while they deal with their own problems. It's been reported that these banks are willing to do almost anything to settle with regulators because they are terrified of the potential liability if any more information comes out. Bankruptcy is not out of the question, and neither is jail time.

    One can only hope that this time these evil bastards finally get some small measure of what they deserve.

    --
    Why is Snark Required?
  5. Re:Boo hoo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I work in the trading industry with experience tracking down order problems between client and exchange, and if you do not receive information on your original order status you had better contact the exchange to find out what happened. FIRING ADDITIONAL ORDERS INTO THE ETHER IS A STUPID DECISION AND YOU ARE 100% LIABLE FOR BEING AN IDIOT.

    Pretty much all of the exchanges use a unique order ID function for tracking orders (both client-unique and exchange unique generated on either side and provided to the other). Once you submit the order a few different things need to happen for almost all exchanges.

    You will receive an order confirmation (Ack message) which will typically contain all of the same information your order had in it along with the Exchange Order ID (you have your own client order ID attached to the trade which is echoed back to you too) or you will receive a Reject message if your order has something wrong with it (price is not valid for the security you are trading, order ID is a duplicate of one you sent already, order type is not allowed for your account, you are submitting a day order during an invalid session, trading is suspended on that security, etc).

    Once your order is acknowledged IT IS LIVE ON THE MARKET. There isn't a valid order state where the exchange has accepted the order, but it won't match in the matching engine against suitable orders (bugs not withstanding, but are extremely rare). Some order types like IOC orders may not be acknowledged but must come back as a trade or a cancel message (IOC is "immediate or cancel", as-in match my order now or cancel it back to me).

    If you submit an order and it does not either come back as acknowledged, filled, cancelled, or rejected then you DO NOT KNOW THE CURRENT STATE OF THE ORDER AND MUST CONTACT THE EXCHANGE FOR ASSISTANCE. At this time your order is considered live (to you at least) and may come back filled at any time! If you have not received an order acknowledgement or reject message you can TRY to cancel your pending order using your own client order ID on some exchanges (others mandate you cancel your order based on their exchange ID), but until you get a FULL cancel confirmation your order is considered LIVE on the market and may be filled at any time.

    Let me repeat one more time: while your order is in any other state than fully canceled, filled, or rejected you MAY BE FILLED at any time!

    Poster before you is correct, anyone who continues trading without knowing exactly the state of their order is a FOOL. You cannot assume anything about the state of your order if you are missing information from the exchange.

  6. Re:Boo hoo! by nri · · Score: 5, Informative

    "If NASDAQ acknowledged receiving the order but didn't confirm that the order was placed, it's entirely possible that the right thing to do was send the order again under the assumption that it didn't get filled."

    Exactly, you resend with a poss resend flag on the fix message

    http://fixprotocol.org/FIXimate3.0/en/FIX.4.2/tag97.html

    my guess is an algo went out of control at the swiss bank.

    (disclaimer, I work with FIX messaging as a day job and I used to worked for a company that is now part of OMX-NASDAQ)

    --
    if :w! doesn't work, try :!cvs commit -m""