September 20, 2008

A costly mistake

Read this in a newspaper today. A German bank based in Berlin sacked 3 of its employees this week. Apparently they transferred 350 million euros to Lehman Brothers by mistake, a day after the latter filed for bankruptcy!

What a weird mistake.. On a normal day, they would have got the money back. But then these are not normal days!

1 comment:

Some Little Greens said...

To Err is human ...

I remember a three year old story .. Fat fingered typing costs a trader’s bosses £128m.

The trader at Mizuho Securities, who has not been named, fell foul of what is known in financial circles as “fat finger syndrome” where a dealer types incorrect details into his computer. He wanted to sell one share in a new telecoms company called J Com, for 600,000 yen (about £3,000).

Unfortunately, the order went through as a sale of 600,000 shares at 1 yen each.

:-)