The London Stock Exchange has said it is confident about
the robustness of its trading platform following last week's crash
on the Tokyo bourse, which stopped trading in stocks and bonds for
more than four hours.
The crash in Tokyo was the most serious since the exchange
replaced floor trading with an electronic trading system in 1999.
The exchange recently carried out a software upgrade to handle an
increase in the market's trading volumes.
Following the crash, Fujitsu, which built and provides
maintenance for the system, said in a statement, "We are currently
making every effort to confirm the cause of the incident and to
take measures to ensure that this type of incident does not occur
in future."
The London Stock Exchange's trading software is developed
in-house, though the build is outsourced to Accenture.
Unlike the Tokyo exchange, which lacked a back-up system, the
London Stock Exchange said it has "a fully redundant back-up
system" for all mission-critical applications. It also said it has
a "very comprehensive" business continuity strategy, including a
dedicated team that looks after all aspects of business
continuity.
The London Stock Exchange's current trading platform, Sets, is
due to be replaced in 2007. By then the replacement system will
have been tested for more than a year.
A spokesman for the London Stock Exchange said it remain-ed
confident its testing procedures were robust enough to guarantee
the resilience of the new system.