Singapore Exchange hit by trading outage

[SINGAPORE] A major power failure caused a suspension of trading in stocks and derivatives on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) for several hours on Wednesday.

The exchange said the problem was due to multiple power supply issues affecting market participants' connectivity. "The outage did not arise from a cyber-attack," it said. "We are currently investigating the root cause for the disruption," Tim Utama, Chief Operations and Technology Officer of SGX, said in a statement.

Brokers said they lost connection to the exchange just after 1415 local time (0615 GMT), with trading formally halted half an hour later.

The securities and derivatives markets were halted at 1451 Singapore time (0651 GMT), and the connection between SGX members and the two markets was unavailable, the exchange said.

The securities market eventually reopened at 1715 local time, 15 minutes after the normal market close, for 30 minutes trading. The derivatives market resumed trading at 1900 local time.

In April, trading on SGX's derivatives market was suspended for more than three hours due to technical problems.

REUTERS