In finance

Finance

"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...

, the term failure to deliver (or fails-to-deliver) typically refers to the inability of a party to deliver a financial instrument, or meet a contractual obligation. A typical example is the failure to deliver shares as part of a short transaction, for which Regulation SHO was designed as a remedy in the United States. The Securities and Exchange Commission publishes "fails-to-deliver" data regarding transactions in the United States.

Stocks bought and sold in transaction must be settled

Settlement (finance)

Settlement of securities is a business process whereby securities or interests in securities are delivered, usually against payment of money, to fulfill contractual obligations, such as those arising under securities trades....

 within 3 days. The buyer must deliver the cash and the seller the stock. If either party fails, a failure-to-deliver takes place. Sometimes deliberate fail-to-delivers are used to profit from falling stocks, so that the stock can later be purchased at a lower price, then delivered, e.g. in the week of March 10, 2008, just before the failure of Bear Stearns

Bear Stearns

The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. based in New York City, was a global investment bank and securities trading and brokerage, until its sale to JPMorgan Chase in 2008 during the global financial crisis and recession...

, the fail-to-delivers increased by 10,800 percent.

According to CNN

CNN

Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...

in the US markets, fails-to-delivers had reached $200 billion a day in September 2011, but no similar data has been available for Europe.