Traders eye return to business as usual after cyber outage, issues
remain
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[July 20, 2024] LONDON/NEW
YORK (Reuters) -Trading returned to normal on Friday after a global
technology outage hampered operations at financial firms from London to
Singapore and New York, although a few residual problems remained,
including outages at some JPMorgan Chase automated teller machines.
A software update wreaked havoc on computer systems globally, grounding
flights, forcing some broadcasters off air and hitting services from
banking to healthcare.
The outage sent ripples through financial markets during Asia and early
European trading hours with a number of firms involved in various
aspects of the trading process affected.
LSEG Group, which runs the London Stock Exchange, said its Workspace
news and data platform, regulatory news service and currency spot and
forward prices had been affected by the outage caused by a "third-party
global technical issue".
By midday in London, most of those issues seemed to have been resolved.
Securities trading on the London Stock Exchange was not affected.
A spokesperson for FTSE Russell, which is part of LSEG, said that they
were experiencing an impact to real-time platforms, "which is preventing
clients from accessing and receiving data" and affecting its indices.
The European Energy Exchange said in a statement on its website that
clients using the Trayport power and gas trading platform were having
problems trading "due to infrastructure issues with third-party service
provider".
At least six trading sources at oil majors Shell and BP as well as
trading house Vitol said operations were affected. BP and Shell did not
immediately respond to requests for comments.
Vitol said core trading operations were functioning well though some
individual computers and some processes that interface with third party
systems were impacted temporarily.
"Friday's global tech outage is an example of an unforeseen event that
market participants always fear, but don't frequently think about," said
Glen Smith, chief investment officer at GDS Wealth Management.
By the start of U.S. business, normality was returning.
The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq said markets were operational and
working normally.
Major U.S. banks including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs said they
had not seen any major impact on their systems or operations. Citigroup
has also not been affected, a source familiar with the matter said.
"The vast majority of our ATMs are operating normally and we are working
to restore service to the remaining ATMs as quickly as possible,"
JPMorgan said. It has 16,000 ATMs across the U.S. and 4,800 branches.
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The headquarters of the European Energy Exchange is pictured during
evening light in a centre-of-town high-rise office building in
Leipzig, Germany April 25, 2021. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse/File Photo
HURDLES TO ACCESSING SYSTEMS
While there were no confirmed reports of trading difficulties as a
result of the outage, some traders earlier said there were signs of
disruption at smaller financial institutions.
One London-based trader said several multilateral trading facilities
were affected, leaving some clients unable to trade.
Some banks and financial services firms said employees and customers
had problems accessing their systems.
"People can't switch their computers on after restarts. Those who
didn't restart are doing fine," another trader said.
Schwab had a posting on its website saying: "Due to a third-party,
global, industry-wide issue, certain online functionality may be
intermittently slow or unavailable. We’re actively monitoring the
issue. Phone services may be disrupted and hold times may be longer
than usual."
Schwab did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Barclays reported customers were unable to manage accounts on its
digital investing platform Smart Investor. Germany's Allianz said
the outage affected the ability of employees to log on to their
computers. Banks in South Africa also reported disruptions.
A spokesperson at the Financial Services Information Sharing and
Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) said the outages had not had a systemic
impact on the financial services industry.
"Core functions, including banking and payment processing, are
largely functioning with some scattered effects," the spokesperson
said.
Fitch said the latest event would likely increase regulatory
scrutiny on IT providers.
"Financial institutions' dependencies on third parties has grown in
recent years as part of the ongoing digitalisation of the sector,"
said Monsur Hussain, Head of Financial Institutions Research at
Fitch.
"The economies of scale are compelling, but they can also bring
systemic risks."
(Reporting by Karin Strohecker, Sinead Cruise, Ron Busso, Susanna
Twidale and Dmitry Zhdannikov in London; Saeed Azhar, Tatiana
Bautzer, Carolina Mandl, Laura Matthews, Saqib Iqbal Ahmed, Michelle
Price; Writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Karin Strohecker; Editing by
Arun Koyyur and Megan Davies, Kirsten Donovan)
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