Nasdaq fined $10m over Facebook IPO mistakes In an open letter issued on Wednesday, Nasdaq chief executive Robert Greifeld said the challenges that the exchange faced when the Facebook stock debuted "were unprecedented." "In the last year, we have carefully reviewed these events," Mr Greifeld wrote. As market leaders, we view our experiences as opportunities to learn and improve. Facebook's initial public offering, the largest ever in terms of volume, was a much anticipated event last year. But on May 18, 2012, the hype surrounding the IPO was soon replaced with panic after a software error at Nasdaq led to a 30-minute delay. The SEC said that Nasdaq's senior management thought they had fixed the systems problem after removing a few lines of computer code and decided not to delay the start of secondary market trading. However, the exchange did not truly understand the extent of the problems, the SEC said. As a result, more than 30,000 orders became stuck in the system, with many brokers waiting to hear about the status of their orders for more than two hours. In addition to charges stemming from poor decision-making, the SEC also said it was charging Nasdaq with a series of technical rule violations. Nasdaq assumed a short position of more than 3m shares of Facebook in an unauthorised error account and covered that short position for a $10.8m profit, two violations of exchange rules, the SEC said. Moreover, the SEC said it found other problems unrelated to Facebook, based on a failure by the exchange to monitor and enforce compliance with price-test restrictions in October 2011 and August 2012.