The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has suffered its second outage this year after a technical problem halted derivatives trading on Tuesday for more than 90 minutes.
The system failure occurred at 09:18, and a halt on trading all derivatives contracts was issued at 09:22, with orders processed within that window remaining valid. Trading resumed at 10:55, and the TSE blamed system problems for the break in trading, giving no additional detail.
This is the second technical error within six months for the TSE that has caused a halt in trading. In February the exchange stopped trading for four hours due to a technical glitch, which affected 241 stocks, including some of Japan’s largest companies. The outage, which the TSE admitted was "rooted in overconfidence", led to CEO Atsushi Saito and other TSE executives taking pay cuts for one month.
The glitch also comes ahead of the expected merger with the derivatives-focused Osaka Stock Exchange, which is scheduled for completion in January 2013.
The proposed combination would create the world’s third-largest equities exchange after NYSE Euronext and Nasdaq OMX, and was given the all-clear in July by the Japan Fair Trade Commission. The OSE has not experienced a major technical glitch since 2002.