UOB temporarily loses $2b of market value

Despite suspicions of trading error, the SGX upheld the trade.

Bloomberg reports that SGX upheld the trades that briefly cleared over US$2b in market value of UOB, adding that the transactions didn’t breach any limits and that there were no requests for cancellation.

Shares in UOB fell by as much as 6.6% in early trading amidst thin volume, with four traders expressing suspicion that a trading error may have caused the decline. The stock rose 0.4% in the afternoon, adding to its yearly gain of about 4.6% during the day’s close.

“No request to cancel the trades was received and the trades were upheld,” Carolyn Lim, a spokeswoman at the exchange told Bloomberg, adding that trades involving 80,000 UOB shares were put through this morning between $24.00 and $25.69 during continuous trading.

The brief plunge in UOB’s shares brought back memories of haphazard spree of sell orders that caused a US$41b crash in shares of Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd. earlier this year.

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