London market resumes trading after technical glitch
Thursday November 26 2009
London Stock Exchange said trading in all securities resumed at 2:00pm local time after dealings in "order-driven" shares had been halted for more than three hours due to technical problems.
“All instruments are now in continuous trading,” LSE, Europe’s oldest independent bourse, said on its website today.
Today’s problems, which started with a connectivity issue at 9:32am London time, resulted in all FTSE 100 Index stocks and “order-driven” securities being placed in an auction period, meaning no trades could be executed.
The glitch comes after a problem related to one part of the LSE’s trading system affected dealings in 1 in 12 UK stocks on November 9.
The LSE, confronting alternative trading systems including Bats Europe and Chi-X Europe, which offer the same stocks with lower fees and faster trading, is buying Sri Lankan technology-services company MillenniumIT for $30m to overhaul its technology and compete better.
The Milan stock exchange, owned by LSE, remained open for trading, LSE spokesman Patrick Humphris said.
London-based Bats Europe, which drew 7.9pc of FTSE 100 trading on average over the last five days, urged traders to use its market instead of the LSE.
“Please be advised that trading in LSE stocks on Bats Europe is still active despite the LSE technical outage,” the so-called multilateral trading facility said in an e-mail to customers today. “Bats Europe encourages participants to continue trading in LSE stocks.”
LSE hasn’t been the only bourse facing technical issues. ING Groep NV stock was suspended in on NYSE Euronext on October 27 after a “huge concentration” of orders overwhelmed computers on the Euronext system.
Trading resumed the next day. On November 12, trading in Swiss stocks was abandoned for the day after technical problems on the SIX Swiss Exchange.
The failure comes a day after the exchange said fiscal first-half profit dropped 40pc as trading slowed and the company lost market share to new rivals.
Net income for the six months ended September 30 declined to £49.3m from £81.7m in the comparable period a year ago.
- Nandini Sukumar
© Bloomberg
