TWO years after a Citigroup trader’s fat-finger error briefly sent European stocks swooning, the bank said authorities are investigating what happened.
“Government and regulatory agencies in the UK and Europe are conducting investigations or making inquiries regarding an equity desk trading error that occurred on May 2, 2022,” the New York-based lender wrote in a quarterly filing late Friday (May 3). “Citigroup is cooperating with these investigations and inquiries.”
The company did not elaborate on the inquiries, or what prompted it to disclose them now. A Citigroup spokesperson declined to comment.
Citigroup publicly acknowledged its involvement in the flash crash just after it happened, noting at the time that it was briefing regulators and exchanges about what occurred. In a statement that day, the bank said one of its traders made a mistake “inputting a transaction”. The trader was working at home, sources with knowledge of the matter said at the time.
The blunder sparked a minutes-long sell-off in the OMX Stockholm 30 Index, setting off havoc in bourses from Paris to Warsaw and, at one point, wiping out more than US$300 billion of European stock value. The lender said it identified the error “within minutes” and corrected it. BLOOMBERG
