Last week, shares of Citigroup halted for five minutes after an erroneous order was entered 17% below the prevailing market price for the stock.

FORBES: Do New Market Circuit Breakers Encourage Rogue Trading?

Mr Isaac reckons that many of the measures that were introduced to instil discipline notably fair-value accounting, which forces banks to mark assets to the prevailing market price actually exacerbated the latest crisis.

ECONOMIST: Learning from the past

Investors type in what they want to buy or sell, and how much more than the prevailing market price they would be willing to pay or receive for various-sized parcels of shares.

ECONOMIST: OptiMistic

The Trustees, who were also highranking officials of Grumman, determined not to tender any of these shares and on October 12 and 13 used Plan funds to purchase 1, 158, 000 additional shares of Grumman stock at the prevailing market price in an effort to defeat the tender offer.

FORBES: John Bierwirth's Grumman Takeover Defense Led To Pension Litigation

But given the prevailing conditions in the natural gas market, price realization has been weak.

FORBES: Summary