Investors were left frustrated this morning when the online and phone systems of broker Hargreaves Lansdown failed to hold up under the weight of traffic prompted by the Royal Mail market debut.
Royal Mail shares soared more than 35% in conditional trading this morning, with more than 10 million shares changing hands within 30 seconds of the market opening, according to the BBC.
The scramble proved too much for Hargreaves Lansdown, which saw its Web site knocked out for large chunks of the morning and long delays on its dealing line.
The broker took to Twitter to apologise to customers but many were unimpressed:
Mark Baxter, director at specialist IT recruiter Greythorn also criticised the firm: "I'm surprised Hargreaves Lansdown didn't draft in some temporary IT specialists to deal with any issues given how important online share dealing is in an IPO. It shows extremely poor planning in the IT department given how well known it was that the shares were oversubscribed."