(Bloomberg News) A Facebook Inc. investor sued Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. claiming the stock exchange "badly mishandled" Facebook's May 17 initial public offering, delaying trades and failing to cancel orders when requested by customers.
Phillip Goldberg, a Maryland investor, said in a complaint filed today in Manhattan federal court that he tried to both order and cancel requests for Facebook shares through an online Charles Schwab Corp. account the morning after the IPO. He is seeking to represent a class of investors who lost money because their buy, sell or cancellation orders for Facebook stock weren't properly processed, according to the filing.
"Orders placed by investors seeking to purchase Facebook shares during the first trading day often took hours to execute," Goldberg said in the complaint. "In the meantime, the investors seeking to purchase those shares had no idea if their trades had executed, and, accordingly, had no idea if they owned Facebook shares at all."
Goldberg, who claims Nasdaq acted negligently, is seeking unspecified damages. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has said it will review the opening day of trading in Facebook shares on Nasdaq. The exchange has blamed poor design in the software used to drive auctions in IPOs.
The case is Goldberg v. Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., 12-CV-04054, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).