Trading Desks Disrupted, Bankers Go Home as Outages Sweep Globe
Legions of bankers from Hong Kong and London to Dubai and South Africa were caught up in the global IT outage, leaving some unable to log on to computer systems and hobbling others from making trades.
At JPMorgan Chase & Co., some staffers were unable to log on to the firm’s systems Friday, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The bank also told some buy-side clients that it was unable to process certain trades, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing information that isn’t public. 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, another person said.
Also in Hong Kong, some Bank of America Corp. employees had trouble logging on too and there was a temporary outage of intercoms, said people familiar with the situation. At Haitong Securities Co., one of the trading desks was out of action for about three hours, one person said.
A plethora of corporations across industries, from Japan and India to the US, reported glitches with their operations. It came after Microsoft Corp. reported an outage across its online services. CrowdStrike Holdings Inc.’s chief executive officer said that the company has identified an update that crashed Microsoft Windows systems around the globe and that “a fix has been deployed.” United Airlines Holdings Inc. and McDonald’s Corp. were among the major companies disclosing a variety of issues involving communications and customer service.
In many cases, employees trying to log on found themselves stymied by a blue error screen.
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.
Staffers at Balyasny Asset Management’s Singapore office were also impacted, with most trading-desk computers down and employees unable to log in, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The system had yet to be restored as of late afternoon local time.
