An embarrassing electronic glitch that halted trade in shares of Apple, the world’s largest company, forced electronic exchange operator BATS Global Markets to withdraw its initial public offering (IPO) on Friday.
BATS Global Markets, which hopes to become an alternative bourse to the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ, had to pull its US$101 million share offering after the hiccup forced trade to halt in Apple shares on the NASDAQ market.
Trades in Apple shares sent from the BATS exchange at US$542.80 — when the market price for Apple was nearly US$600 — tripped the automatic volatility “circuit-breaker” that halted trade.
BATS blamed a “systems issue” that affected all shares with the listing symbols in the range of A through BF — including BATS’ own shares.
“As a result of this systems issue, three erroneous trades occurred on the BATS BYX Exchange in Apple Inc, one of which caused a volatility halt in that stock. The erroneous trades were broken under BATS’s clearly erroneous trade policy,” BATS said.
The exchange said the glitch was later rectified.
However, after the market closed, the St Louis, Missouri-based exchange withdrew its public offering as “appropriate action” following the day’s problems.
“Although our affected market has reopened, in the wake of today’s technical issues, which affected the trading of certain stocks, including that of BATS, we believe withdrawing the IPO is the appropriate action to take for our company and our shareholders,” BATS chief executive Joe Ratterman said in a statement.
The IPO, which went out at an already disappointing US$16 a share, was due to close on Wednesday.
Apple shares, which were frozen for five minutes, closed the day down 0.6 percent at US$596.05.
“BATS was supposed to be one of the top 17 IPOs of 2012. What a joke,” said John Ogg of 24/7 Wall St.
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