UBS to sue Nasdaq over 'gross mishandling' of Facebook IPO

Washington - Swiss global financial services company UBS is threatening to sue Nasdaq after technical problems at the exchange cost it nearly 230 million dollars on the Facebook IPO.
 
UBS is to sue Nasdaq over what it has described as the U.S. exchange's "gross mishandling" of the 104 billion dollars stock market listing of Facebook.
 
"As a market maker in one of the largest IPOs in U.S. history, we received significant orders from clients, including clients of our wealth management businesses," UBS said.
 
"Due to multiple operational failures by NASDAQ, UBS's pre-market orders were not confirmed for several hours after the stock had commenced trading," it added.
 
According to The Telegraph, UBS was one of several banks working on the flotation of Facebook that ended up losing money after a series of technical problems with Nasdaq's systems.
 
Because of the technical failures, many orders for Facebook shares were entered several times, meaning that when the shares were finally delivered several hours later UBS received far more stock than its clients actually wanted leaving it with a large number of shares to sell at a loss following the fall in the company's share price.