The Financial Times of London reported this week that General Motors has dropped the Swiss Bank UBS from the group of underwriters involved in its upcoming initial public offering (IPO).
The reason, the FT says, was disclosed in an amended IPO prospectus (see PDF) in which GM said that, "an employee of a previously named proposed underwriter ... distributed an unauthorised e-mail to various potential institutional accounts."
This London Telegraph story says that the UBS analyst sent the email to over 100 of those "potential institutional accounts" by mistake.
The email supposedly contained "discussed pricing and other details of the $13bn issue with clients before they were made public last week," the FT noted.
The Telegraph says the "rogue email" is likely to cost UBS $10 million in fees, along with some more of its reputation that it has been trying hard to win back after several years of terrible results.
Robert N. Charette is a Contributing Editor to IEEE Spectrum and an acknowledged international authority on information technology and systems risk management. A self-described “risk ecologist,” he is interested in the intersections of business, political, technological, and societal risks. Charette is an award-winning author of multiple books and numerous articles on the subjects of risk management, project and program management, innovation, and entrepreneurship. A Life Senior Member of the IEEE, Charette was a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society’s Golden Core Award in 2008.