Monday, May 21, 2012

‘Poor Design’ Delayed Facebook IPO: Nasdaq


‘Poor Design’ Delayed Facebook IPO: Nasdaq


The Facebook Inc. logo is displayed with price valuations on monitors during trading at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, U.S. Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg
Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. (NDAQ) (NDAQ), under scrutiny after shares of Facebook Inc. were plagued by delays and mishandled orders on its first day of trading (FB), blamed “poor design” in the software it uses for driving auctions in initial public offerings.
Computer systems used to establish the opening price were overwhelmed by order cancellations and updates during the “biggest IPO cross in the history of mankind,” Nasdaq Chief Executive Officer Robert Greifeld, 54, said yesterday in a conference call with reporters. Nasdaq’s systems fell into a “loop” that prevented the second-largest U.S. stock venue operator from opening theshares (FB) on schedule following the $16 billion deal.
While the errors were resolved and Facebook completed its offering, the day was another setback for equity exchanges trying to erase the memory of the botched IPO in March by Bats Global Markets Inc., another bourse owner. Nasdaq’s issues contributed to disappointment among investors as Facebook (FB) (FB)’s stock closed up 0.6 percent after rising 18 percent earlier.
“It’s amazing that both Bats and Nasdaq unfortunately failed in an inglorious way,” William Karsh, the former chief operating officer at Direct Edge Holdings LLC, an exchange operator that competes with Nasdaq, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “It proves that technology isn’t infallible. There are so many moving parts that things can go wrong. That’s the lesson we learn.”
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it will review the trading. Jonathan Thaw, a spokesman for Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, declined to comment.

‘Not Our Finest’

“This was not our finest hour,” Greifeld said, a day after Nasdaq’s board convened to discuss the offering. Asked if his job is secure, he said, “I certainly hope so.”
Nasdaq will use an “accommodation pool” to pay back investors that should have received executions in the opening auction, based on the decisions of a third-party reviewer, Greifeld said. It may total $13 million, he said.
Facebook advanced 23 cents to $38.23 on May 18 after surging as high as $45. It fell as low as the IPO price of $38, which valued the company at $104.2 billion. More than 43 million shares were executed at that level, the second-most changing hands at any price except for $42, the opening auction price, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The shares slipped 8.5 percent to $35 as of 9:34 a.m. New York time today.

First Trade

Problems surfaced on May 18 at 11:11 a.m. New York time after Morgan Stanley (MS) (MS), one of the underwriters that sold 421 million shares the night before, completed its role setting the price for the trade in Nasdaq’s opening auction, Greifeld said. Nasdaq’s software for IPOs allows investors to cancel or update details of orders until the auction runs. Trade requests received during the 5 milliseconds it took to operate the auction disturbed the process, leading to an imbalance of buys and sells and sending the program into a loop.
Nasdaq officials manually intervened to allow the auction to occur at 11:30 a.m. The IPO software “didn’t work” even after thousands of hours of testing for “a hundred scenarios” aimed at anticipating problems, Greifeld said. “We’re not happy with our performance,” he said on the call.
Volume during the auction amounted to 75.7 million shares, or almost 1 percent of trading during the entire day on all U.S. exchanges, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

‘Manually Intercepted’

“We saw on a real-time basis, obviously with the pressure of the world upon us, that this was happening,” Greifeld said. “We then manually intercepted this cross,” he said. “That manual intervention said we had to ignore the cancels that came in between the raindrops as we were processing the trade.”
Responding to the malfunction, Nasdaq altered its IPO procedures today. The exchange operator said it will no longer accept “cross-eligible” order modifications after the auction’s final price calculation has begun, according to an e- mailed statement.
Nasdaq wound up with 5,000 shares of Facebook because of its intervention, Greifeld said. A broker was used to sell the stock that had been placed in the exchange’s so-called error account for $10 million. Greifeld said he would ask the SEC for permission to add the money to the $3 million available from the exchange, according to its rules, to repay investors that should have received trades.

Some Dispute

Orders totaling 30 million shares were submitted into the opening auction between 11:11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., Greifeld said. About half of them may involve “some level of dispute,” he said. Greifeld said he didn’t think the delay in starting trading affected the price of Facebook shares.
Adding to the day’s confusion, Nasdaq reported an issue after trading began with confirming transactions from the opening auction with the brokerages that placed them. The exchange said in a statement posted to its website at 11:59 a.m. New York time that it was having a problem delivering the messages. An update at about 1:57 p.m. said they had been sent.

تھرکول منصوبےکیلئےرقم مختض کیجائے،لاہورہائیکورٹ میں درخواست

تھرکول منصوبے کے لیے بجٹ میں رقم مختص کرنے کے لیے لاہور ہائیکورٹ میں درخواست دائر کر دی گئی ہے۔

درخواست چوہدری مسعود گجر ایڈووکیٹ کی جانب سے دائر کی گئی ہے جس میں موقف اختیار کیا گیا ہے کہ پاکستان اس وقت توانائی کے بدترین بحران سے دوچار ہے جسکی وجہ سے ملکی معیشت کا پہیہ جام ہو چکا ہے ۔ملک میں صنعتیں بند اور عوام بے روزگار ہو رہے ہیں ۔ توانائی کے بحران کی وجہ سے ملکی حالات انتہائی ابتر ہوچکے ہیں ۔

درخواست گزار کے مطابق توانائی کے بحران کے خاتمے کے لیے تھرکول سے بجلی بنانے کا منصوبہ شروع کیا گیا اور پاکستانی سائنسدانوں کی شبانہ روز محنت سے کامیاب تجربہ بھی کر لیا گیا مگراب حکومت منصوبے کے لیے رقم فراہم نہیں کر رہی جس سے خدشہ ہے کہ ملکی ترقی کے لیے شروع کیا جانے والا منصوبہ ختم ہو جائے گا لہذا عدالت حکومت کو حکم دے کہ تھرکول منصوبے کے لیے آئندہ بجٹ میں پانچ ارب روپے مختص کیے جائیں۔

Chicago Conference

Chicago Conference 

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Chicago: The Communiqué of Chicago Conference has been released which says that Pakistan’s role is very important in ensuring lasting peace, stability and security in Afghanistan and in facilitating the completion of the transition process.
The  Communiqué released hours after Nato leaders met at McCormick Place in Chicago.
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) says it is working with Pakistan to reopen supply routes as soon as possible.
The participating leaders said that “We stand ready to continue dialogue and practical cooperation with relevant regional actors in this regard. We welcome the progress on transit arrangements with our Central Asian partners and Russia.”
“Nato is ready to work towards establishing, at the request of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, a new post-2014 mission of a different nature in Afghanistan, to train, advise and assist the ANSF, including the Afghan Special Operations Forces. This will not be a combat mission. We task the council to begin immediately work on the military planning process for the post-ISAF mission,” said the declaration.

Pakistan’s enemies will be considered Iran’s enemies: Ahmadinejad

Pakistan’s enemies will be considered Iran’s enemies: Ahmadinejad



TEHRAN - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has expressed complete solidarity with the government and people of Pakistan, saying Pakistan’s enemies will be considered the enemies of Iran.
“Iran shares a long history of friendship with Pakistan and enjoys common religious and cultural values. Iranian people will stand by the people of Pakistan in all times to come,” he said in meeting with Minster for Regulation & Services Firdous Ashiq Awan along with religious scholar Khanam Tayyaba Bokhari in Tehran.
The Iranian president discussed a wide range of issues with the Pakistani minister. The meeting lasted over an hour in which the president directed the cultural minister to prepare an official document supporting Iqbal Cultural Centre in Sailkot. 
He directed the Iranian health minister to foster further relation in the field of pharmaceutical production and making use of technologies in each others’ countries. Ahmadinejad praised Firdous and Khanam for playing their role in bringing the relationship of the two countries closer. The MoUs between the two countries of the above mentioned initiatives will be signed during the Iranian president’s upcoming visit to Pakistan in August 2012.