http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/04/06/timnwsnws01036.html

City brought to a halt by computer glitch

BY OUR CITY STAFF LONDON'S reputation as a world financial centre was seriously damaged yesterday when a computer glitch paralysed the Stock Exchange for more than seven hours on what should have been one of its busiest days of the year. The shutdown, which deprived City stockbrokers of tens of millions of pounds in transaction fees, was serious enough to trigger an immediate investigation by the Financial Services Authority. Ministers also considered extending the 1999-2000 tax year to compensate private investors who missed out on billions of pounds of tax savings by selling or buying on the last day of the tax year. However, as the Stock Exchange hobbled back to life at 3.45pm and the trading day was extended to 8pm, the Treasury and the Inland Revenue issued statements refusing investors any concessions. The failure, which followed a shorter breakdown on Monday, forced stockbrokers and investors to sit on the sidelines after the previous evening's record trading on Wall Street. Tuesday had witnessed wild swings on the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq technology share market. Stockbrokers were furious with the breakdown, the first serious stock market hitch since that caused by the storm of 1987. On an average day, 1.5 billion shares are traded. yesterday only 878 million changed hands. Ian Martin, co-head of trading at HSBC, the UK's biggest bank, said the breakdown could not have come at a worst time. "This is a key day in the tax year for private investors." Under normal circumstances, thousands of investors would have traded some of their stocks at the last minute to use up their annual capital gains tax allowance and offset any losses against previous gains. But the debacle did not prevent hundreds of million of pounds flowing into Isas. The London Stock Exchange said it had been crippled by a software problem which corrupted share price information sent to professional traders before the market opened. Martin Wheatley, an Exchange director, said the decision was taken to shut down the market, which trades electronically, rather than allow dealing to begin on incorrect share price information. The FTSE 100 index closed 47.7 points weaker at 6379.3. www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/04/06/timnwsnws01036.html

-- mike in houston (mmorris67@hotmail.com), April 05, 2000

Answers

This is serious stuff. This is the first I've heard of a prolonged shutdown of a major world stock exchange.

-- Loner (loner@bigfoot.com), April 06, 2000.