Yahoo News Nasdaq Settles Over Facebook IPO Glitches
The Nasdaq stock exchange has agreed to pay a $10m (£6.6m) penalty after regulators said its systems and decisions disrupted Facebook (NasdaqGS: FB - news) 's public stock offering last year.
The penalty to settle the federal civil charges is the largest ever imposed against an exchange, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Nasdaq has also paid $62m (£41m) to reimburse investment firms that lost money because of the problems with its systems and a series of "ill-fated decisions" by Nasdaq officials.
That compensation plan was criticised as "woefully inadequate" and failed "to address the magnitude of Nasdaq's unprecedented failures", according to a letter UBS (Berlin: UBRA.BE - news) bank sent to the SEC at the time.
Facebook launched its initial public offering on May 18, 2012, amid great fanfare and sky-high expectations.
But computer glitches at Nasdaq delayed the start of trading and threw the social networking site's launch into temporary chaos.
The SEC says a design flaw in Nasdaq's systems was to blame, which was then exacerbated by human error.
Facebook's IPO launched at $104bn (£65bn), but the company's value dropped soon after, with shares quickly falling from their debut price of $38 (£25.16).
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