Exchange probe into Turquoise 'glitch'

The London Stock Exchange said a glitch on its Turquoise cross-border share trading platform may have happened under "suspicious circumstances," forcing it to delay the adoption of the same technology for its main trading system.
By The Newsroom
Published 2nd Nov 2010, 21:24 BST
Updated 2nd Nov 2010, 21:24 BST

Turquoise, a pan-European multilateral trading facility, was down for two hours early yesterdday. "Human error was to blame for the disruption that began," the LSE said in a statement. "Preliminary investigations indicate that this human error may have occurred in suspicious circumstances."

The company said it had started a full internal investigation and that it had informed the relevant authorities. The Financial Services Authority declined to comment.

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LSE chief executive Xavier Rolet is keen to migrate its main order book trading platform Sets to new technology that is already in use by Turquoise, to make it faster and more attractive to high-frequency trading firms that generate huge volumes.

But Tuesday's incident "coupled with necessary network upgrades" had now forced the stock exchange to postpone until next year the change which was slated to happen this month.

"The London Stock Exchange Group will work in partnership with customers to agree a date as early and practicably as possible in 2011," the company said.

The glitch is the second at Turquoise in less than a month, after a problem with a network card forced the exchange to shut the system for over an hour on October 5.