I’m as guilty as anyone of the careless typo but sometimes the stakes are higher and it really pays to double-check your work.

There was this post from Friday last week in the Financial Times’ Alphaville,

Last year, Norway’s $1.5tn sovereign wealth fund revealed that it had lost NKr980mn, roughly $92mn, on an error relating to how it calculated its mandated benchmark.

The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund’s $92mn Excel error

Then there was this from Bloomberg yesterday,

Less than an hour after issuing the statement, Lyft Chief Financial Officer Erin Brewer joined a call with analysts and said the company is actually expecting adjusted earnings margins, calculated as a percentage of bookings, to expand by 50 basis points — not 500 — acknowledging, when asked by an analyst, that the press release was incorrect.

A ‘Clerical Error’ in Lyft Outlook Triggered 67% Jump

What about you? Care to share any times where a small mistake or oversight led to outsized consequences?