Blackout at the London Stock Exchange

In a time when communication via the World Wide Web is paramount, we are all aware of the frustration when our internet connections fail. Often the result is having to wait to be able to check our email. Today we saw what happens in the instance of mass connection failure on a far larger scale: ‘Trading on the London Stock Exchange was halted this morning for the longest period in over eight years because of a connectivity issue’, says the Timesonline.co.uk.

Before 9am, Europe’s oldest independent exchange suspended all the connections, leaving the traders without prices and completely unable to buy or sell shares. Technicians failed to re-connect for seven hours, and they still don’t know the real cause of the problem. This was the worst incident of this kind for UK trading in more than eight years.

Last year, in November, the London Stock Exchange had to close its bidding for a similar problem, which left traders without live information for more than 40 minutes. But the largest failure is still that which shut down the entire exchange for eight hours in the April 2000. Today the problem coincided with a rally in European stocks and a surge in the trading volume following the U.S. Government’s decision to take control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, underlines Bloomberg.com. About 352 million shares were traded before 9am in London today, more than double the length from the same period last week.

In a moment thousands of screens froze; all the computers connected to the British system were affected by the blackout, leaving City traders desperate and angry. The London Stock Exchange attempted to calm its customers by giving accurate details of the situation, emphasis on ‘attempted’. Traders were left infuriated without given a valid cause or timescale for the problem.

The total opportunity cost of today’s disaster has yet to be calculated. The incident has highlighted that connectivity is still a serious issue to combat in today’s online world otherwise we risk compromised freedom at home and the suspension of the FTSE 100 for most of the working day!