Canada’s stock exchange suffered the 1989 collapse known as the Friday the 13th mini-crash.
The event occurred on Friday, October 13, 1989, when the proposed leveraged buyout of UAL Corporation failed. UAL was the parent company of United Airlines, and the deal’s collapse helped trigger a sharp sell-off. The Toronto Stock Exchange Composite Index fell 3.5 percent, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the United States declined less severely.
The episode is called a mini-crash because it was brief and much smaller than the 1987 global crash. Its name can cause confusion with other market panics that occurred on a Friday the 13th. The key identifying details are the failed UAL buyout, the date in 1989, and the major impact on Canadian equities.