By European stocks on Monday briefly suffered a big slump in the latest flash crash to hit global exchanges.
The move was subsequently tied to an error by Citigroup Inc.’s London trading desk, news reports said.
The Stoxx Europe 600
SXXP,
-1.46%
fell as much as 3% before recovering to a decline of less than 1%. Other markets including the Oslo Bors All Shares index
OSEAX,
-1.77%
saw even steeper declines. Trading conditions were on the thin side with London closed for a bank holiday.
“During the morning of Monday May 2, Nasdaq saw a sudden drop in key benchmark indexes on Nasdaq Stockholm, Nasdaq Helsinki and Nasdaq Copenhagen, as well as other major exchanges in Europe. The reason was a sell event by a market participant,” said Nasdaq Stockholm, in a market update.
“After review, Nasdaq has not seen any reason to cancel trades that were made during this event,” the exchange said.
Bloomberg, citing people with knowledge of the matter, said the selloff was the result of an erroneous transaction made by Citigroup’s
C,
+1.04%
London trading desk. A Citigroup spokesperson declined to comment on the reports.
