London Stock Exchange suffers global computer outage

The London Stock Exchange was the victim of a massive IT outage that sparked global chaos on Friday.

Firms were unable to post updates on the LSE’s Regulatory News Service (RNS) this morning, while Reuters reported that the LSE Group’s Workspace news and data platform suffered an outage.

A statement on the LSE Group website said the news service was “experiencing a global third-party technical issue, preventing the publication of news”.

RNS services were finally restored later that morning, with a huge backlog of statements posted by 10:36am.

Industries from airlines to banks, hospitals, supermarkets and television stations in several countries have experienced significant challenges in carrying out regular operations following the disruption.

British Airways, Ryanair and Wizz Air have warned passengers of delays, while the UK’s largest airports including Heathrow and Gatwick have admitted their check-in and boarding procedures have been affected.

In addition, food giant Morrisons informed customers that its contact centre was closed, bakery chain Gail’s was unable to accept card payments and Sky News briefly went off air.

The flaw has been attributed to an update to cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike’s antivirus software and to problems with Microsoft’s 365 Apps and Azure cloud computing platform.

CrowdStrike President and CEO George Kurtz later wrote on X that the issue was not a security incident or cyberattack, but was caused by a “flaw found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

He added: “The problem has been identified, isolated and a solution has been implemented.”

‘We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide comprehensive and ongoing updates on our website.’

European markets reacted negatively to the IT disruption: the FTSE 100 fell 0.5 percent to 8,161.3, France’s CAC 40 index was down 0.7 percent at 7,530.3 and Germany’s DAX was in the red 0.6 percent at 18,241.9.

London Stock Exchange Group shares were down 0.8 percent at 93.94 pounds by mid-afternoon on Friday, but are up around 12 percent over the past year.

Dan Coatsworth, investment analyst at AJ Bell, said: “The fact that the world is coming to a standstill due to a global technology meltdown shows the dark side of technology and that relying on computers does not always make life easier.”

He added: “The severity of the problem depends on its duration. A few hours’ interruption does not help, but it is not a catastrophe.”

‘Prolonged disruptions are another matter, which can cause damage to businesses and economies.’