Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s bungled initial public offering in 2012 is a little closer to being finally tucked away. According to Reuters and CNBC, NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:NDAQ) said today that it will compensate investors on Dec. 31 for a glitch which kept orders for the social network’s stock from being processed in a timely fashion on its opening day at the exchange.
NASDAQ To Pay $41.6 million
The exchange had already said it would pay up to $41.6 million to the investment companies which had claims related to Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s IPO. NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:NDAQ) said that’s the amount of claims which qualified for compensation, though that’s just a small fraction of the $500 million market participants claim to have collectively lost because of the glitches.
Companies which qualified to be compensated by NASDAQ had until Dec. 23 to sign an agreement not to file a lawsuit against NASDAQ in connection with the IPO. In exchange for agreeing not to sue, they became eligible for the one-time compensation.
NASDAQ’s glitch just one of many
Since NASDAQ’s highly visible problems with Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s IPO, there have been a number of other exchange-related glitches. Perhaps the largest happened in August when the NASDAQ halted trading on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Facebook, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and many other popular companies because of yet another glitch. That one went on for hours. The exchange had problems again in November. All in all, it just hasn’t been a good year for the NASDAQ exchange.
And Facebook’s IPO wasn’t the only one NASDAQ botched in 2012. In December of last year, another glitch at the exchange accidentally canceled WhiteHorse Finance Inc (NASDAQ:WHF)’s IPO. Let’s just hope that 2014 turns out to be a better year for NASDAQ and all of the stocks which are publicly traded on it. This year has just been much more eventful than most investors would like, in this respect.
