On May 29, 2013, the SEC issued an order instituting an administrative and cease-and-desist proceedings against the NASDAQ Stock Market, LLC and NASDAQ Execution Services, LLC. in relation to Facebook's IPO. According to the SEC: "In April 2012, Facebook, Inc. ('Facebook') announced that it had selected NASDAQ as its listing exchange. The Facebook IPO was widely anticipated to be among the largest in history, with huge numbers of institutional and retail investors expressing interest in participating. On May 18, 2012, the eyes of the investing world were focused on the Facebook IPO. Unfortunately, as a result of a design limitation in NASDAQ's IPO Cross system, neither the IPO itself nor secondary market trading in Facebook proceeded as expected. The decisions made by NASDAQ in response to trading disruptions that resulted from the design limitation led to further downstream systems issues and caused NASDAQ to violate a fundamental rule governing order priority as well as several other Commission and NASDAQ rules." On May 29, 2013, the SEC announced that it had accepted The NASDAQ Stock Market, LLC and NASDAQ Execution Services, LLC's offers of settlement and imposed a cease-and-desist order and remedial sanctions.

On May 29, 2013, the SEC announced in a Press Release that: "The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged NASDAQ with securities laws violations resulting from its poor systems and decision-making during the initial public offering (IPO) and secondary market trading of Facebook shares. NASDAQ has agreed to settle the SEC's charges by paying a $10 million penalty -- the largest ever against an exchange."