Bats Global Markets, Inc. (delisted) (AMEX:BATS)
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In one of the shortest debuts ever for a newly public company, BATS Global Markets was forced to pull its initial offering after systems issues caused a day filled with cancelled trades and uncertainty.

The company, which priced its 6.3 million-share deal at $16 Thursday night, had been scheduled to trade on the BATS Exchange, but ran into problems from the moment it opened.

The stock was halted in the morning for "clearly erroneous" trades after it opened. BATS issued an alert on its website that it was "actively investigating an issue." The exchange issued an alert at 10:48 a.m. EDT that there were "system issues in symbols range A through BF."

BATS didn't explain what went wrong with the trading in its shares. In a statement just ahead of the market's close, the company's chief executive said the deal was being withdrawn.

"Although our affected market has reopened, in the wake of today's technical issues, which affected the trading of certain stocks, including that of BATS, we believe withdrawing the IPO is the appropriate action to take for our Company and our shareholders," said Joe Ratterman, chairman, president and chief executive of BATS Global Markets.

Even though BATS had priced its IPO, it was still able to withdraw the deal because the trades weren't scheduled to settle until March 28. Until the trades settle, they can be canceled.

Besides BATS, shares of Apple Inc. (AAPL) were temporarily halted in the morning for five minutes after erroneous trades were made on BATS's exchange. According to FactSet, orders placed through the BATS Global Markets came in well below where Apple had previously been trading.

Although companies withdraw their IPOs all the time before pricing, it is rare that they do so after the deal has already priced. In 1993, Wilt Chamberlain's Restaurants Inc. was rescinded after it priced, began trading, and declined sharply--angering individual investors, who threatened legal action based on reports that the company had allegedly taken a shortcut when it appraised its only restaurant in operation.

The same fate befell Spectrum Diagnostics a year earlier, which canceled its IPO after short-sellers pounded its stock. Osteotech Inc. did the same in 1991 when its chairman took a leave of absence, according to University of Florida finance Professor Jay Ritter.

Another example was the IPO of Eagle Computer in 1983, said John Fitzgibbon, president of research firm IPOScoop.com. In that case, the CEO of Eagle was killed in a car accident the day of the IPO, and the IPO was rescinded. The company eventually did come public under another CEO, but later went into bankruptcy.

The BATS IPO launched as the Securities and Exchange Commission examines whether some rapid-fire trading firms such as Getco LLC and Tradebot Systems Inc., BATS investors, have used their close links to computerized stock exchanges like BATS to gain an unfair advantage over other investors. The wide-ranging probe, which was detailed in a front-page article Friday in The Wall Street Journal, is examining a number of electronic exchanges. The probe is at an early stage and there is no suggestion of wrongdoing by trading firms and exchanges.

The SEC probe stems partly from a broad look at computerized trading that regulators initiated after the "flash crash" in May 2010, when stocks fell and rebounded sharply within minutes, following glitches in computer-trading systems.

-By Lynn Cowan; 202-257-2740; lynn.cowan@dowjones.com