Apparently, it was a “fat finger” mistake.
We’ve all made a few typos in our life. Hell, there’s a reason why spellcheck and autocorrect exist, right?
But we can bet you that your typo has never cost $140 billion.
According to The Wall Street Journal, a Samsung Securities employee accidentally caused the tech giant Samsun to out a dividend in the form of its own shares to more than 2000 employees who were members of the company’s stock-ownership scheme.
This mistake meant that $140 billion dollars’ worth of shares (three times what the company is worth by the way) were deposited into employee accounts.
Before Samsung could do anything, 16 staff members sold off a whopping $241 million worth of shares.
Jeez, we wouldn’t want to see this guy’s performance review.
Words by Kate Stevens
