Trader causes “flash crash” in the markets

“Flash Crash”: The mistake of a trader of Citigroup destroyed hundreds of billions of market capitalization on the European markets within a few minutes. This is not the first Citigroup debacle.

It was only a few minutes, but they are likely to have an expensive follow-up for Citibank. A mistake by one of their traders shook the stock exchange in Stockholm on Tuesday and caused it to collapse sharply. Within a few minutes, up to $ 300 billion in market capitalization was lost on the European stock markets.

The Swedish leading index OMX Stockholm 30 collapsed by up to eight percent in the course of a so-called “flash crash” and the EuroStoxx 50 also lost three percent at times. Citibank has taken responsibility for the sensational error.

A London trader made a mistake in a transaction, the institute said. “Within minutes, we identified and corrected the error,” says Citigroup. It is not known exactly what the error is.

She then informed the regulators, according to Citibank. The incident was first reported by the Bloomberg news agency.

For Citigroup, it was not the first breakdown of this kind. As early as 2020, the US institute mistakenly transferred $ 900 million to debtors of the cosmetics manufacturer Revlon. The bank was unable to recover much of the money.