Twitter has had a “test run” of its flotation on the stock market to try to avoid a similar flop of Facebook last year. The mock market launch by the New York Stock Exchange on Saturday was done to avoid a repeat of Facebook’s launch on the rival Nasdaq exchange. For the first time in […]
Twitter has had a “test run” of its flotation on the stock market to try to avoid a similar flop of Facebook last year.
The mock market launch by the New York Stock Exchange on Saturday was done to avoid a repeat of Facebook’s launch on the rival Nasdaq exchange.
For the first time in the NYSE’s history, traders simulated buying and selling shares on the exchange on Saturday, to try to clear up any technical hitches that it may face when shares go public.
The test was done at the request of its member firms – many of whom took part in Facebook’s 2012 IPO on the Nasdaq.
Both exchanges vied to be home to Twitter’s stock, and many analysts said the trading disruptions that occurred on Facebook’s Nasdaq debut likely played to NYSE’s favour.
Twitter, which intends to sell 70 million shares at between $17 and $20 each, will be holding the biggest Internet IPO since Facebook, which sold a much larger 421 million shares at $38 each.
Twitter’s initial price will be announced on November 6 and it is expected to start trading as early as the next day.
In the case of Facebook, the tremendous volume of orders on the first day of trading exposed a glitch in Nasdaq’s system, ultimately preventing timely order confirmations for many traders.
They were left unsure about their exposure for hours, and in some cases for days afterwards and a collective loss of $500m occurred in the IPO.
