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Glitch Halts Toronto Trade of Nortel

Story Filed: Thursday, June 01, 2000 1:18 PM EST

TORONTO (Reuters) - Shares of Nortel Networks Corp. (NT.TO), the Toronto Stock Exchange's most heavily weighted stock, remained unavailable for trading at noon on Thursday due to an unexplained technical problem.

Trade in Nortel stock on the New York Stock Exchange was not affected. The TSE's technical department was investigating the problem but was unable to provide an estimate on what time trading of the stock would resume.

``The stock is unavailable for technical reasons right now,'' said a spokesman in the TSE's surveillance department.

The spokesman said Nortel, which carries a weighting of about 18 percent on the TSE 300 composite index, was the only stock known to be hit by the technical problem.

Nortel was last traded in Toronto at C$84.00 at 10:11 a.m., up C$4.25, on volume of 1.3 million shares. In New York, Nortel was up 2-12/16 to 57-1/12 on volume of 3 million shares in midday trading.

``We are as concerned about this as the Toronto Stock Exchange is and we're looking forward to a speedy resolution of this problem,'' said Nortel spokesman Jeff Ferry.

The glitch is one of several problems that have halted trade on the technically challenged stock exchange in the past year.

``There's some technical glitch and they can't enter orders and they have not been given a time frame when it will be fixed and open for trading again,'' said Andrew McCreath, a fund manager at Synergy Mutual Funds, in Toronto. ``Another good old TSE mess up -- that's what it boils down to.''

In early March, the TSE suffered a major breakdown that halted trade for more than two and a half hours.

Despite the problem with Nortel, the TSE 300 index was trading higher in the afternoon on Thursday, up 238.01 points, or 2.6 percent, to 9490.00.

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-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), June 02, 2000