Tokyo Stock Exchange CEO to resign over Oct system failure: Nikkei

[TOKYO] Tokyo Stock Exchange president and chief executive officer (CEO) Koichiro Miyahara has decided to resign over a system failure that caused an unprecedented all-day suspension on the bourse last month, the Nikkei business daily reported on Monday.

The outage on Oct 1 cast a shadow on the exchange's credibility as Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga prioritised digitalisation and dented Tokyo's hopes of boosting the country's standing as a global financial centre.

Akira Kiyota, CEO of Japan Exchange Group (JPX), which operates the Tokyo Stock Exchange, will stay on and also serve as president of the Tokyo bourse, the Nikkei said.

JPX declined to comment. Mr Kiyota is due to hold a news conference at 3.30pm following a briefing by the Financial Services Agency, which is widely expected to issue a business improvement order after the system failure.

Financial regulators last month conducted an on-site inspection on the exchange to investigate the causes behind the outage.

The all-day trading halt was the worst-ever outage since the world's third-largest equity market switched to all-electronic trading in 1999. The exchange previously said the glitch was the result of a hardware problem at the bourse's "Arrowhead" trading system and a subsequent failure to switch to a back-up.

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The exchange had also said a newly formed committee would draw up fresh guidelines by next March on how to restart trading following a system failure.

REUTERS