Financial Times, May 21, 2004: John Walter: "Run
a fund? I can do that"
Investment house benefits from a spreadsheet error
in ScS Upholstery. The retailer made an error in a spreadsheet
that caused them to announce a profit warning affecting their
share price. The investment house invested and upon correction
of the spreadsheet error, the share price recovered.November 01, 2003 The Grand Rapids Press
Grand Rapids investment manager fined by New York Stock Exchange
due to violation of NYSE rules and SEC laws. The documentation
was in a spreadsheet which was disposed of after the share dealings
and therefore could not be verified.
October 2003, Yahoo! News
Fannie Mae had to amend their financial reporting due
to spreadsheet errors. The result was that the correction increased
unrealized gains on securities ($1.3 billion), accumulated other
comprehensive income ($1.1 billion), and total shareholder equity
($1.1 billion).June 03, 2003
TransAlta Corp takes a $24 million charge due to a
spreadsheet error that landed it more US power transmission
hedging contracts than it expected. The error appears to relate
to a cut/ paste or copy/ paste error.
To see how copy paste causes errors view the Copy
Paste error clip.
2002: Audit Of The Colorado Student Loan Program's
Establishment And Use Of Federal And Operating Funds
A spreadsheet error results in CSLP incorrectly determining
the amount required for an operating fund. A date was misinterpreted
by Excel as a dollar amount that was included in the calculations.PM Archive - Monday, 3 September, 2001
A spreadsheet error caused the National Australia Bank to write
down the value of its US mortgage book by AUS$ 3 billion, affecting
its share price.
2001
Poor controls in spreadsheet circumvents other internal
controls contributing in the AIB / Allfirst currency trading
fraud
Duplication in the summation of cells in the Medicare/ Medicaid
crossover log results in the costs being overstated.
Jan. 1995: Computing error at Fidelity's Magellan
fund
Spreadsheet error results in the estimated share distribution
announcement being incorrect by $2.6 Billion, as a result of
a missing minus sign in the Fidelity Magellan fund. |
Examples
of what goes wrong with Spreadsheets Financial institutions/ Asset
Management/ Private Equity/ Mergers and Acquisitions etc