Bloomberg outage hits London traders, disrupts bond auctions
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The news: Bloomberg’s financial terminals, an essential tool for thousands of financial and investment professionals across the globe, suffered a widespread outage on Wednesday, disrupting trading and government bond offerings.
The context: The terminals, which cost a tidy USD28,000 or so per year to run, were running with delays and the absence of live pricing on Wednesday morning, preventing users from carrying out trades.
Bloomberg’s chat service that many traders and investors use to communicate with each other in real time also suffered an outage.
The service was reportedly restored by 11am UK time on Wednesday, around 90 minutes after issues with the service began emerging.
In a statement late on Wednesday morning, Bloomberg said: “Our systems are returning to normal operations and Terminal functionality has been restored following a service disruption earlier today.”
The glitch held up debt sales in Europe, with the The UK Debt Management Office, which on Wednesday had been auctioning bonds due in 2031, gave investors an extra 90 minutes to bid. It ultimately concluded the auction successfully, selling the equivalent of USD5.7 billion of bonds.
In Portugal, a similar debt sale that was due to take place in the late morning was delayed until the afternoon.
“We’ve been told not to trade. I can’t remember this level of non-functioning,” one London-based fund manager told the FT on Wednesday. “Would you bet on a match that you can’t see or know the score?” another added, adding that trading volumes were lower as a result.
The sources: FT, WSJ, UK Debt Management Office
