Singapore, Malaysia indexes face temporary disruption

Singapore

REAL-TIME values of Singapore and Malaysia's market benchmarks were temporarily disrupted on Thursday due to technical glitches at index provider FTSE Russell.

The issue became apparent when Singapore's benchmark Straits Times Index was largely unchanged in the first hour of trading, despite DBS Group Holdings Ltd tumbling as much as 3 per cent after reporting earnings that missed analysts' estimates. DBS, South-east Asia's largest lender, has the biggest weight in the Singapore index at 16 per cent.

The equities benchmark started reflecting the right prices around 10 am, said Joel Ng, head of research at KGI Securities (Singapore) Pte. Representatives at FTSE, a unit of London Stock Exchange Group plc, didn't immediately reply to an email and calls seeking comment outside regular UK business hours.

"FTSE has confirmed that all real-time values related to their indexes are now updating accurately," Singapore Exchange Ltd., which operates the city's stock and derivatives market, said in a statement. "The matter has been resolved." The FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index was also disrupted due to "a technical disruption at FTSE's end," the Malaysian bourse said. The issue was resolved as of 9:52 am local time, Bursa Malaysia said.

At 1:02 pm in Singapore, after the fault had been corrected, the Straits Times Index was quoted at 3,282, down 1.4 per cent, while DBS was down 2.4 per cent to S$26.30. The KLCI Index was 0.4 per cent lower at 1,780. BLOOMBERG