Following the debacle that was the Facebook IPO on May 18, and Nasdaq OMX’s announcement that it plans to compensate member firms for who were “disadvantaged by technical problems” during the IPO process, the exchange has also revealed that it “has selected IBM to conduct a thorough review of the current state of processes for designing, developing, testing, deploying and operating market systems.”
Reports suggest that IBM’s remit is wide ranging, covering not just the IPO crossing systems, but Nasdaq’s entire trading systems, including its Inet trading technology, which has been installed at exchanges globally. Inet is considered to be the fastest matching technology available, as was recently noted in its rollout at the SIX Swiss Exchange.
It’s not been a great year for technology underpinning IPOs. In March, Bats Global Markets had to withdraw its own IPO – the first it had attempted – when its technology failed, causing disruption to the trading of some other stocks.
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