Could Facebook IPO Trigger Hill Scrutiny?
By: Facebook made history again on Friday though not in a way founder Mark Zuckerberg could have ever imagined.
Facebook may have given advocates of increased regulation a new bully pulpit due to events surrounding the first hour of trade as Facebook began its life as a public company.
Scheduled to begin trade at 11am, Facebook stock was delayed for 5 minutes, then 10 minutes then a full half hour.
Nasdaq had not released an official comment at the time of writing, but published reports suggested the exchange had problems changing and canceling orders due to a high-volume rush.
To make matter worse, other reports said Nasdaq had failed to provide traders with proper acknowledgement of their Facebook trades. Typically a report is sent confirming a trade has been executed.
All told, Roger McNamee, co-founder of Elevation Partners says developments are just another sign that, “we have a very mysterious electronic trading systems – and that it’s effectively unregulated and unsupervised.”
“As an investor I’m terrified because the SEC has lost control. They have no idea what’s going on. The problems today are structural and they cut across exchanges. We have a system where capital markets are out of control."
McNamee says he hopes the forces of reform come into play. And he suggests it will be nearly impossible for law makers to ignore circumstances, especially in the wake of JPMorgan’s $2 billion trading loss.
What do you think? We want to know!
Posted by CNBC's Lee Brodie
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