The technical issues that marred the debut of Facebook as a public company on Friday were embarrassing, but were not responsible for the lackluster performance of the social network’s stock price that led to an almost flat close for the day, the chief executive of the Nasdaq OMX Group said on Sunday.
The main issue, according to the executive, Robert Greifeld, was a number of order cancellations that came in during the final stages of the initial public offering process. That backed up Nasdaq’s systems in letting some investors know whether their orders had been executed.
While trading began at 11:30 a.m., Nasdaq was unable to deliver some trade execution messages until 1:50 p.m. Traders did not know whether their orders had gone through. And some traders did not get confirmation of their bids until after 2:30 p.m., according to market participants.
Nasdaq is “humbly embarrassed” by the issue, Mr. Greifeld told reporters during a conference call on Sunday.
Some investors and people involved in the I.P.O. process questioned whether the Nasdaq foul-ups contributed to a drop in Facebook’s stock price. After initially opening at $42.05, the company’s shares tumbled, nearly breaking through the $38 offer price. The share price rose again, only to fall back again, closing the trading day just slightly above the offer price.
To these people, investors’ inability to know whether their orders had been filled may have significantly hampered trading.
But Mr. Greifeld said nothing in Nasdaq’s data indicated that the exchange’s technical issues had any effect on Facebook’s shares.
“It would lead a reasonable person to conclude that it didn’t have an impact on the stock price,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment