Deals
Traders Are Furious After Computer Botches Stock Sale
- AbbVie slashed Dutch auction price to $103 from $105 apiece
- Many traders “likely got burned,” Broome Street’s Samuels says
This article is for subscribers only.
Equity traders were fuming after AbbVie Inc., maker of the world’s biggest-selling medicine, Humira, announced the wrong price in a Dutch auction tender for about $7.5 billion of its own stock.
The North Chicago, Illinois-based pharmaceutical giant last night corrected the price it will pay for shares tendered in the buyback offer to $103 apiece, from $105 announced earlier in the day. AbbVie said some stock was “erroneously omitted from the initial preliminary results” in calculations by a third-party depositary.