Trading disrupted, bankers go home after outages sweep globe

Bankers from Hong Kong and Dubai to South Africa and London were caught up in the global IT outage, leaving some unable to log on to computer systems and hobbling others from making trades.

Some staffers at banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Nomura Holdings Inc. and Bank of America Corp. were unable to log on to their firms’ systems Friday, with many met with a blue error screen. At Haitong Securities Co., one of the trading desks was out of action for about three hours. In Norway, the central bank said it would have to conduct a banking system liquidity auction via email and over the phone on Friday due to problems with its online system.

The disruptions were tied to a botched update of a widely used cybersecurity program owned by CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. that took down Microsoft Corp. systems. CrowdStrike Chief Executive Officer George Kurtz said that the fault had been identified and “a fix has been deployed,” adding that it wasn’t a cyberattack. The issue hit health-care systems, airlines and companies including McDonald’s Corp.

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“Financial institutions’ dependencies on third parties has grown in recent years,” Monsur Hussain, head of financial institutions research at Fitch Ratings, said in a statement. “The economies of scale are compelling, but they can also bring systemic risks.”

The impacts on the individual firms are based on interviews with people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing information that isn’t public.

JPMorgan also told some buy-side clients it was unable to process certain trades. Even as the bank later switched to its backup server, many people in its Hong Kong office left to work from home for the rest of the day. At Nomura, some of the company’s trading desks were disrupted, but the bank diverted some trades to PCs that were functioning.A cohort of hedge funds, who rely on banks to execute and settle trades, faced disruptions as well. Hedge fund traders said they were facing connectivity and processing issues. Bloomberg terminals were operating as normal.

Staffers at Balyasny Asset Management’s Singapore office were impacted, with most trading-desk computers down and employees unable to log in. The system had yet to be restored as of late afternoon local time. BlackRock Inc. was impacted, but affected systems are starting to recover.

Capitec Bank Holdings Ltd., which is based in South Africa’s Stellenbosch wine region and is the country’s biggest bank by customers, warned that it was facing nationwide system issues. A swath of employees at Commercial Bank of Dubai PSC were unable to log on to their computers Friday, forcing many bankers to postpone meetings and presentations. Some of the employees left the office while others waited for the issue to be resolved.

Representatives for JPMorgan, Bank of America, Haitong, Balyasny, BlackRock and Nomura declined to comment, while a spokesperson at Commercial Bank of Dubai didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

London Stock Exchange Group Plc was also swept up in the series of technical glitches. The exchange giant’s RNS service - the main venue that UK companies use to make regulatory news announcements - experienced an issue that prevented news from being published on its website, a problem it later said was resolved. The service processes about 350,000 announcements a year, and 75% of all price-sensitive news originates on the service.

“We are aware of the issue,” the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority said in an emailed statement, adding that it’s working with individual firms.

The Bank of England is “monitoring the situation closely and continuing to engage with firms and other authorities,” it said in a statement. “There is no impact on the Bank’s systems.”

Deutsche Bank AG said its research portal was impacted by the global outage and that many research reports are still awaiting publication and distribution, while S&P Global Inc. said it was experiencing “service issues across numerous S&P Global Platforms, including Securities Finance products,” according to an emailed statement. The company didn’t say what specific products, services or data were impacted.

The European Central Bank has so far “not experienced any direct impact and we keep monitoring this issue very closely,” a spokesperson said. “ECB Banking Supervision is in contact with any banks that file a cyber incident report as per supervisory guidance.”