Två omkastade tal, och ett system som inte gick att stoppa, orsakade en förlust på minst 27 miljarder yen (1,7 miljarder kronor) för en mäklarfirma på Tokyobörsen idag:

"Japan's government rebuked the Tokyo Stock Exchange and one of the country's biggest brokerage firms Friday after a typing error caused Mizuho Securities Co. to lose at least 27 billion yen ($225 million) on a stock trade. (...)

The trouble began Thursday morning, when a trader at Mizuho Securities tried to sell 610,000 shares at 1 yen (less than a penny) apiece of a job recruiting firm called J-Com Co., which was having its public debut on the exchange.

It had actually intended to sell 1 share at 610,000 yen ($5,041).

Worse still, the number of shares in Mizuho's order was 41 times the number of J-Com's outstanding shares, but the Tokyo Stock Exchange processed the order anyway.

Mizuho says another trader tried to cancel the order three times, but the exchange said it doesn't cancel transactions even if they are executed on erroneous orders.

By the end of the day, Mizuho Securities — a division of the nation's second-largest bank, Mizuho Financial Group, Inc., had lost at least 27 billion yen ($225 million). That total could rise, however, Mizuho Securities spokesman Hideki Sakuma said Friday, adding that the mishap was sparked by human error.
Yahoo! News: Botched Stock Trade Rattles Japan Market, 9 dec 2005

"Human error"? Ja; människor gör fel hela tiden. Men bra, användbara system ska eliminera möjligheterna att göra fel (så långt det är möjligt). Om något går fel ska man kunna ångra kommandot eller stoppa förloppet.

(För några år sedan skrev jag om en långt mindre förlust i det bolag jag då jobbade i: Så mycket kostar en användbarhetsmiss.)

Bild: behind-Eyes - K. Higuchi/Flickr. Some rights reserved.


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