LONDON, Sept 8 (Reuters) - The Intercontinental Exchange said it was investigating the cause of an outage which shut down trade across London commodity markets for more than an hour on Monday.
Trading on the ICE ground to a halt at 1235 GMT, according to Reuters data, and did not resume until 1356 GMT.
A spokesperson for the ICE said they were not currently aware what caused the outage, but they did not think it was in any way related to problems on the London Stock Exchange on Monday.
The LSE experienced its worst technical glitch in eight years, with trade shut from 0813 GMT due to connectivity problems.
The ICE does not share any infrastructure with the LSE, but the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa was forced to suspend trading from 0821 GMT due to connectivity problems relating to the LSE.
The outage on the ICE was the second time trade had shut this year, with a power outage back in May forcing trading to stop for almost three hours.
ICE offers futures and OTC markets on a single trading platform for crude markets, oil products, natural gas, power and emissions, as well as agricultural commodities.
Some traders have called into question the stability of the ICE platform following its second outage this year.
'If this starts to be a regular problem it will reduce peoples' willingness to use the markets,' said Tony Machacek, a trader at Bache Financial. 'NYMEX has been more consistent and when there has been a problem it's been with ICE.'
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) in London said that the outage was an internal matter for the ICE to investigate.
(Reporting by David Sheppard and Ikuko Kao; Editing by James Jukwey) Keywords: ICE TRADE/OUTAGE tf.TFN-Europe_newsdesk@thomsonreuters.com cmr COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Financial News Limited 2008. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Thomson Financial News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Financial News.
Trading on the ICE ground to a halt at 1235 GMT, according to Reuters data, and did not resume until 1356 GMT.
A spokesperson for the ICE said they were not currently aware what caused the outage, but they did not think it was in any way related to problems on the London Stock Exchange on Monday.
The LSE experienced its worst technical glitch in eight years, with trade shut from 0813 GMT due to connectivity problems.
The ICE does not share any infrastructure with the LSE, but the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa was forced to suspend trading from 0821 GMT due to connectivity problems relating to the LSE.
The outage on the ICE was the second time trade had shut this year, with a power outage back in May forcing trading to stop for almost three hours.
ICE offers futures and OTC markets on a single trading platform for crude markets, oil products, natural gas, power and emissions, as well as agricultural commodities.
Some traders have called into question the stability of the ICE platform following its second outage this year.
'If this starts to be a regular problem it will reduce peoples' willingness to use the markets,' said Tony Machacek, a trader at Bache Financial. 'NYMEX has been more consistent and when there has been a problem it's been with ICE.'
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) in London said that the outage was an internal matter for the ICE to investigate.
(Reporting by David Sheppard and Ikuko Kao; Editing by James Jukwey) Keywords: ICE TRADE/OUTAGE tf.TFN-Europe_newsdesk@thomsonreuters.com cmr COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Financial News Limited 2008. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Thomson Financial News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Financial News.
© 2008 AFX News
