Facebook Ruins Nasdaq, Naz Admits Blunder

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Blame was passed from Facebook’s bankers to Nasdaq (NASDAQ: NDAQ) as the Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) IPO faltered and opening bids and offers failed to be properly matched and there was some evidence this occurred for hours. The IPO price point almost broke below the set price and bankers appear to have worked furiously to keep shares above $38

Was this primarily the fault of Nasdaq and a failure to check its infrastructure? First evidence shows “yes”. This has already–in only a day–undermined its image as the preferred platform for IPOs . The image has not been helped much by the drop in the values of Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN), Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA), and LinkedIn (NASDAQ: LNKD)

The net effect is that NYSE (NYSE: NYX),which lost the Facebook launch. The exchange will have a powerful case that the balance will list on NYSE.

Update: The Wall Street Journal writes that “Robert Greifeld, chief executive of Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., on Sunday acknowledged design problems with Nasdaq’s technology after the exchange operator was widely seen as bungling the landmark listing of shares of Facebook Inc.on Friday.”

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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