Press Association –
The New York Stock Exchange said its test run of Twitter’s initial public offering on Saturday was a success, as the exchange tries to avoid the technical problems that marred Facebook’s debut last year.
While the NYSE often does testing on the weekend, this was the first time the exchange conducted a mock IPO.
Early on Saturday, traders from member firms gathered with NYSE staff to run simulated buy and sell orders, test the flow of those orders and open the stock.
Twitter is expected to go public sometime before the end of November.
“This morning’s systems test was successful, and we’re grateful to all the firms that chose to participate,” NYSE spokeswoman Marissa Arnold said.
“We are being very methodical in our planning for Twitter’s IPO, and are working together with the industry to ensure a world-class experience for Twitter, retail investors and all market participants.”
Twitter will be the biggest technology IPO since Facebook went public in May 2012. While Nasdaq won Facebook’s listing, one of the biggest IPOs in years, the debut was hit with trading delays and order failures. The Securities and Exchange Commission later fined Nasdaq 10 million US dollars (£6.2m), the largest sum ever levied against an exchange.
Twitter plans to sell 70 million shares between 17 dollars and 20 dollars (£10-£12) each for a possible take of 1.6 billion US dollars (£989m). Shares will trade under the ticker “TWTR”.
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