A few firms who should have sanity-checked just one more time:
- Marks and Spencer - When they announced that sales had risen in the quarter but they had, in fact, fallen; mistake due to... an Excel summing error.
- JPMorgan Chase - When they had $6.2bn in trading losses in 2012 (the “London Whale” incident) due to... an Excel error.
- Fidelity’s Magellan fund team - When they miscalculated a loss of $1.3bn as a gain, due to... a forgotten negative sign in Excel.
As you find yourself with some extra time these next few months, try out our Excel Best Practices (here) to make sure your name doesn’t appear in the list above!
Learn more about Excel snafus here: https://www.ft.com/content/de9a1105-5f68-4bdf-baf9-19be5801f17f