Motorola ‘Fat-Finger’ Slip Likely Led to EVOC Surge, Trader Says
August 16, 2011, 6:14 AM EDTBy Mark Lee
Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The erroneous trade that drove up EVOC Intelligent Technology Ltd. almost fivefold in Hong Kong trading may have been caused by an investor seeking to buy shares of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.’s biggest supplier.
EVOC, a Shenzhen-based maker of electronics that trades under the “2308” stock symbol, jumped to HK$3.46 at 9:30 a.m., seconds after the market opened, from the previous day’s close of 70 Hong Kong cents. Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd. subsequently said the transaction of 12,000 EVOC shares was an error.
The trade occurred on a day that Foxconn International Holdings Ltd., the Motorola contract manufacturer that trades under the “2038” symbol, surged as much as 17 percent to HK$4.02 after Google Inc. agreed to purchase Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.
“You probably have to assume it’s a fat-finger trading error,” said Gavin Parry, managing director at Parry International Trading Ltd. in Hong Kong. A dealer intending to trade Foxconn shares mistakenly entered EVOC’s ticker, he said.
Scott Sapp, a spokesman at the Hong Kong exchange, said the bourse doesn’t comment on individual companies. A company official at EVOC, who only identified herself by her surname Yu, said she had no information about the trade, as did Vincent Tong, a spokesman at Foxconn International.
Foxconn International’s surge was the stock’s biggest intraday gain since December 2009.
--Editors: Young-Sam Cho, Dave McCombs
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Lee in Hong Kong at wlee37@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net
