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'Fat fingered' banker makes $6 billion typo

Posted On: Oct. 22, 2015 12:00 AM CST

We’ve probably all suffered from “fat finger syndrome” when typing on small keyboards or our phones.

But rarely are such mistakes as potentially calamitous as the “fat fingered trade” committed by a junior banker at Deutsche Bank A.G.

According to the Financial Times, an unnamed junior banker at Deutsche Bank mistakenly paid a U.S. hedge fund a whopping $6 billion last June after confusing a gross figure and net value.

The banker’s boss reportedly was on vacation at the time of the incident.

The bank apparently recovered the money the following day and has reported the event to regulators in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States.

It is not known whether the junior banker is still with the company, the FT said.

If he is, it is probably a good bet that he hasn’t risked processing too many trades lately.