Nasdaq CEO says sorry for Facebook IPO debacle

The Facebook IPO nightmare doesn’t seem to end either for Facebook or Nasdaq. Now, according to a Wall Street Journal report, Nasdaq’s CEO Robert Greifeld has officially apologised for the technical glitches which caused a delay in trading orders for brokers.

In his first interview since Facebook’s IPO debut, Greifeld said, “Clearly we didn’t succeed here.” He felt that he and his staff “owe the industry an apology”. He added the he and his staff have undergone “an entirely clinical, analytical” review of the May 18 events to calculate trading losses caused by the glitches.

Facebook which went public on 18 May, has done rather badly on the stock exchange with share prices remaining well below the initial offering of $38. On the day when trading began, for nearly 20 minutes the line Nasdaq had opened up to keep traders informed about the social media company’s $16 billion IPO was mute. The stock was supposed to open at 11 am New York time, but trading did not begin till 11.30 am.

The delay in trading left several brokers angry and many of them didn’t know for hours whether their orders went through.

Greifeld had initially defended the IPO saying that the social network’s first day of trading was “successful.”

Just yesterday the Nasdaq OMX Group Inc, which owns the Nasdaq stock exchange announced that it would offer compensation to a few brokerages that lost money due to Facebook’s botched IPO on the exchange.

In a separate interview with CNBC, Greifeld said the stock exchange is “embarrassed,” but is not responsible for the losses of individual investors .