Imagine you’re in the middle of an exciting conversation, fingers racing across the keyboard, but boom—you accidentally made a typo. Or maybe in an email? You’ll most likely be embarrassed or disappointed with yourself, or worse, get fired. We’ve all been there, right?
Well, so did JP Morgan. But theirs was a billion-dollar blunder!
Read on till the end to learn how one mistake led to unimaginable consequences.
JP Morgan Chase & Co. published a report declaring Chinese internet stocks “uninvestable”.
The bank’s editorial staff were asked for the word “uninvestable” to be removed from 28 research reports before they were published on March 14 last year.
While the word was successfully removed from most of the reports, and in some cases, the word “uninvestable” was replaced by “unattractive”, it still appeared in the published version of four, including one on JD.com.
The line reads:
“As risk management becomes the most important consideration among global investors in relation to their China investment strategy, as they price in China’s geopolitical risks, we view China Internet as ‘uninvestable’ on a six-12-month view with a binary share price outlook.”
Ironically, the note also predicted that at least 10 of the Chinese internet companies would see their stock prices rise by year-end.
All this happened at a time when the tech sector was facing crackdowns and Zero-Covid policies were causing disruptions in the world’s second-largest economy.
As a result, US and Asian markets lost roughly $200 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Despite acknowledging the editorial error, JPMorgan stood by the versions of the reports released to the public. A JPMorgan spokesperson told Bloomberg that they stand by their published research and the analyst’s independent analysis of the sector, and a few subjective terms used interchangeably don’t change that.
Consequently, JPMorgan was removed as the most senior underwriter for Kingsoft Cloud Holdings’ planned Hong Kong stock offering.
While the bank remained involved as a sponsor of the offering, it was then ranked behind UBS Group and China International Capital Corp. on the deal.
So, what was your worst typo error?
Written By Shivani Singh
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