ASX sees trade outage after hardware malfunction

Exchange closes for the day trading after hardware failure within its equities database.

The Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) has suspended trading following a hardware malfunction in its equities trading database.

The hardware failure led to “knock-on consequences” throughout the day, with delayed openings and no closing auction.

The usual opening time of 10am was delayed to 11.30am, though an “operational error” meant the staggered opening caused further trading failures.

By 3.35pm, ASX announced that the market would not re-open and there would no closing single price auction.

Trading is expected to resume as normal on Tuesday, and ASX is “continuing to investigate the root cause of the issue.”

Its newly appointed chief executive officer Dominic Stevens, said the issues were not in any way related to cyber-security.

He said: “What happened today does not meet the high standards of operations and system reliability that we set ourselves, and that our customers should rightly expect of us.”

In August, ASX confirmed its replacement for former CEO Funke Kupper and appointed Dominic Stevens.

Stevens is no stranger to ASX, having held an independent non-executive directorship with the exchange group since December 2013.  

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