London Stock Exchange technical glitch halts FTSE 100 trading
Thursday November 26 2009
London Stock Exchange said technical problems mean all FTSE 100 and "order-driven" shares have been placed in an auction period, meaning trades won’t be executed.
“Due to ongoing technical difficulties, the exchange has placed all order-driven securities in to an auction call period,” the exchange said on its website today.
“The length of this period has not yet been decided and will be scheduled following resolution to the issue. All quote driven securities should be considered indicative at this time.”
The LSE said the length of the auction call period hasn’t yet been decided and it will give traders a “minimum of 30 minutes notice” before normal trading resumes.
Today’s glitch comes after a problem related to one part of the LSE’s trading system affected trading in 1 in 12 UK stocks on November 9.
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.
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.
- Nandini Sukumar
© Bloomberg
