Small Excel Goof Up Can Lead to Serious Legal Trouble
“Excel error leaves Barclays with unwanted Lehman assets'
| Barclays Capital is left with unwanted Lehman assets from a
spreadsheet mistake in a legal document. 179 contracts were erroneously
included in a Barclays' purchase agreement relating to its acquisition
of Lehman Brothers”. |
According to the news, the error was caused by a junior employee
who unknowingly unhid rows of Lehman's assets not to be included in
the contract when he did a global re-formatting of the worksheet.
The error was discovered more than a week later and Cleary Gottlieb
Steen & Hamilton, Barclays Capital's law firm filed a relief motion
asking the court to exclude the misrepresented contracts from the deal.
John Cant, who heads MPI Europe a financial consulting firm says,
“Excel is a powerful tool. Like a chainsaw, in the hands of
a skilled operator it is hugely effective - but in untrained or rushed
hands and without the proper safety equipment it can be positively
dangerous.”
This Barclays Capital goof up could have been the result of the
employee's lack of proper knowledge about spreadsheet. In the
hands of a well trained user, excel can become a powerful business
analytical tool. In untrained hands, it is merely a computer calculator.
On hindsight, the error could have been avoided if some extra
steps were taken. The sender could have taken a few more seconds
to copy only the wanted assets into another worksheet to minimize
the risk. This could have been done by using Excel Goto Special Function
which can easily select the nearly 100 rows with more than 24,000
individual cells in a few simple steps. It will ensure that the
worksheet contains only assets to be included in the contract and
make the reformatting completely harmless.
Like any other task, it is equally important that an employee is
well trained in Excel. One mistake can not only lead to a lot of
extra time consumption in correcting it but also a lot of legal
harassment as in this case.
Always keeping your staff well-trained would signify that your firm is more
risk efficient and less exposed to disasters caused by dearth of skills.
Prevention is always better than cure.
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Fine Extra.
Jason Khoo
Author of "Excel Secrets for Highly Effectively Marketers",
Chief Trainer of everydayExcel Business Lab Pte Ltd.
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