Samsung Securities mistakenly paid out millions of shares to its employees as stock dividends, resulting in a plunge in the brokerage’s share price. 

Under an employee stock ownership plan, the company had originally planned to pay dividends of one thousand won per share to its employees. But dividends of one thousand shares were mistakenly paid out on Friday after a worker processed a wrong figure. 

The error was fixed but some five million shares had already been sold by some employees, resulting in an eleven-point-68 percent plunge in Samsung Securities' stock price at one point during trading.

Over two-point-eight billion shares were erroneously paid as dividends worth nearly 112-point-seven trillion won based on the previous day's closing price.  

The Financial Supervisory Service, the nation's financial watchdog, said that it has requested the brokerage to be swift in compensating affected investors if they request compensation, without them having to rely on legal action.  

The watchdog said it will closely monitor how Samsung Securities deals with the situation related to the cause of the incident, issues of moral hazard and disciplining those responsible.