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A fault at the London Stock Exchange prevented blue-chip British companies from trading on Friday for over an hour, the longest such outage in 8 years.
What was called a “technical software issue” kept FTSE 100 UKX, +0.55% and FTSE 250 MCX, +0.32% companies from opening until 9:40 a.m. local time. Volumes for top U.K. companies lagged their European peers on Friday even after the re-opening.
That’s the second outage in 14 months for the LSE LSE, +1.07% , which recently inked a $27 billion pact to buy Refinitiv, a provider of financial data and infrastructure.
The LSE’s other exchanges, including the AIM and Borsa Italiana, operated as normal.
LSE shares rose 1.6% after the outage in a broadly better day for global markets.
This being the age of social media, Twitter had a few jokes, while the LSE itself was curiously silent, with its last communication being about the need for “persuasive communication in the corporate world.”
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