STEVE LADURANTAYE
Globe and Mail Update
September 8, 2008 at 12:19 PM EDT
UAL Corp. saw its shares all but wiped out Monday morning on false rumours that it planned to file for bankruptcy protection.
Shares in the parent of United Airlines were halted on the Nasdaq stock exchange after plummeting 99 per cent to 1 cent. The company said the panic was sparked by a four-year-old story from the Chicago Tribune reappearing as current news Monday morning.
“Reports that the company filed for bankruptcy are completely untrue and were cause by the irresponsible posting of a six-year-old Chicago Tribune story by the Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper website with the date changed,” the company said in a statement. “The story was related to United's 2002 bankruptcy filing, and United has demanded a retraction from the Sun Sentinel and is launching an investigation.”
The exchange halted the shares “pending the release of material news” at 11:06 a.m. (ET).
The company came out of bankruptcy protection in 2006, after a three-year reorganization.
Wow. I wonder if any of the employees of the Florida Sun Sentinel "coincidentally" went short on UAL shares.
This much damage from such a careless mistake should be cause for a negligence lawsuit IMO.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
Depending on what the regulators decide, they may well end up retroactively cancelling all trades past a certain time, forcing all parties to give back their gains or wipe out their losses. I can already see the lawyers lining up for first dibs on the lawsuits.
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I'm not sure why people choose 'To Love is to Bury' as their wedding song...It's about a murder-suicide
- Margo Timmins
When it becomes serious, you have to lie
- Jean-Claude Juncker
Shouldn’t the stock surge back up in a matter of hours when everyone realizes what happened, and then rushes out to buy 1 cent shares of an airline?
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Sea Skimmer wrote:Shouldn’t the stock surge back up in a matter of hours when everyone realizes what happened, and then rushes out to buy 1 cent shares of an airline?
yeah, I was thinking that; and wondering if it was still relatively cheap and whether I could take advantage of it before it rebounds
Sea Skimmer wrote:Shouldn’t the stock surge back up in a matter of hours when everyone realizes what happened, and then rushes out to buy 1 cent shares of an airline?
Not if trading is still frozen on the stock while NASDAQ looks into the matter.
“There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it’s perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible … Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between drug warriors and child molesters.” - Jacob Sullum[/size][/align]
Latest report: All trades stand, if you got in and profited, you're golden. If you lost, you're eating it. Trading has resumed after a halt.
This post is a 100% natural organic product.
The slight variations in spelling and grammar enhance its individual character and beauty and in no way are to be considered flaws or defects
I'm not sure why people choose 'To Love is to Bury' as their wedding song...It's about a murder-suicide
- Margo Timmins
When it becomes serious, you have to lie
- Jean-Claude Juncker
