Euronext's markets resume trading after Monday's glitches

Reuters

Published Oct 20, 2020 03:15AM ET

Updated Oct 20, 2020 05:25AM ET

By Sudip Kar-Gupta and Thyagaraju Adinarayan

PARIS/LONDON (Reuters) - The European cash, derivatives and commodity futures markets run by Euronext (PA:ENX) resumed normal trading on Tuesday, a day after two technical glitches caused widespread disruption to several of Western Europe's major stock exchanges.

A glitch on Monday morning caused problems across all of Euronext's markets, which span from Dublin and Amsterdam to Paris and Lisbon. Trade resumed normally in the afternoon but there were then major price swings during closing auctions, prompting the exchange to cancel all orders placed after 1730 Central European Time (CET).

It was the latest in a number of breakdowns on international exchanges this year ranging from Tokyo to Deutsche Boerse (DE:DB1Gn).

Euronext said the root cause of the issue was a technical failure impacting one of its data management systems, denying any possibility of there being a cyber attack.

While the problems looked to have been resolved in Tuesday morning trade, the outage will be embarrassing for Euronext which is planning a major expansion through a 4.3 billion euro ($5.07 billion) deal to buy Borsa Italiana from London Stock Exchange (L:LSE).

"(We) sat on the sidelines for most of the morning," said Mark Taylor, a sales trader at Mirabaud, adding it had to cancel a couple of orders due to a "mass confusion" on the close.

The problems at the close are likely to have been particularly problematic as exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and hedge funds typically use prices set during closing auctions for their daily pricing, making the final five minutes of trade crucial.

The glitches caused the share price of Dutch healthcare technology company Philips (AS:PHG) to fall almost 4% at Monday's close to less than 40 euros. The company later said it was informed by Euronext that their closing price would actually be set at 42.3 euros.

A Euronext spokesman declined to comment on the value of trade orders cancelled on Monday's close. Closing auctions across Europe's major bourses have on average accounted for a fifth of daily average volumes, analysts say.