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Firm's clerk enters order to sell $4B worth of securities when order should have been $4M. from CNN October 3, 2002 NEW YORK (Reuters) - A slip of the finger led Bear Stearns Cos. Inc. to erroneously enter an order to sell nearly $4 billion worth of stocks Wednesday, fueling an already tumbling market. The order about 20 minutes before the closing bell was the result of a "clerical error" and should have been entered as $4 million, the New York Stock Exchange stated. All but $622 million of the orders were canceled before execution, it said. Bear Stearns said the error will have no material impact on the company and declined to comment further. [Comment from Doug Anderson: imagine writing software that allows any amount to be entered! This should have been picked up in testing. As a result, this simple mistake cost the company two thirds of a billion dollars!] |
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Multi-Billion-Dollar Oops!