What started as an innocent search for recent bankruptcy filings by a journalist caused United Airlines’ shares to plummet 76 percent to $3 a share on Monday before NASDAQ halted trading just before 11:07 a.m.
According to both ReportonBusiness.com and Reuters, an unnamed staffer at Income Securities Advisor, Inc. (ISA) in Miami, Lakes, Fla., typed in the search terms “bankruptcy” and “2008” into Google’s search engine. The staffer was simply looking for any information that was overlooked regarding companies in trouble, according to ISA President Richard Lehmann.
Google returned a story referring to United’s bankruptcy filing on Monday that was published in the Florida Sun-Sentinel. United did file for bankruptcy filing on Monday, September 9, 2002, although that date was not mentioned in the story, according to Lehmann.
The staffer then posted a summary of the story from the Sun-Sentinel on Bloomberg. Although Bloomberg have their own reporters, they do take stories from other information sources such as ISA.
A spokesman for Bloomberg said that since the article was not written by their journalists, their editors did not edit it.
Lehmann called the appearance of the article “suspicious” since the employee followed normal protocols and ISA had no economic interest in United.
The Sun-Sentinel didn’t explain how the article appeared on the site. The Tribune Company, which owns The Chicago Tribune and Florida Sun-Sentinel, said that it was looking into the situation.
A statement from the Tribune Co., which owns the Sun-Sentinel and the Chicago Tribune, said a preliminary investigation showed that the Chicago Tribune story from 2002 “was located in the archive section of the website of the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida. The story contains information that would clearly lead a reader to the conclusion that it was related to events in 2002. In addition, the comments posted along with the story are dated 2002.
The story has since been removed from the Sun-Sentinel’s website.
Trading in shares for UAL Corp resumed at 12:30 p.m. and the stock closed at $10.92, down $1.38, or 11.2 percent, from its close on Friday.
