This article is more than 1 year old

Egg flotation doesn't stink

But online trading trouble stalls customer get rich quick plans.

Shares in internet bank Egg soared on its first day of trading but online private investors couldn't make a quick buck due to technical hitches.

Trading began at 177.5p and reached a high of 190p and has since settled down to around 176p.

Egg customers were emailed shares last night with accompanying customer numbers and a link to the Lloyds TSB registrars site where they could trade provisionally online until trading in London opened this morning.

Technical hitch number one: The link to the Lloyds TSB site was broken, meaning that while the banking community could trade the shares, private investors could not.

Hitch Two: Egg customers could not trade even after the link had been restored. It transpired that a zero prefix had been omitted from the customer number emailed to investors - a human error that took some time to remedy.

A tenfold oversubscription meant that both private and institutional investors' applications were scaled back. The sale was expected to raise £150 million for Egg and £86 million for Prudential.

The 160p share price set yesterday by Egg's parent Prudential, valued interent banking offshoot at £1.3 billion.

Meanwhile, Abbey National has joined the fray as its internet bank, Cahoot, went live today. The bank is offering an interest free overdraft and credit card for a year to "at least" the first 25,000 people to sign up for an account.

Predictably, some users had trouble accessing the site - it seems Abbey National underestimated the demand for two grands-worth of free overdraft. No one at Cahoot could be reached for comment.

Those customers who miss the first wave of accounts will be charged between 7 and 11 per cent on overdrafts and will receive interest on accounts in credit of around three per cent.®

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