Liffe's a glitch as gremlins strike

by Jim Armitage, Evening Standard TECHNICAL glitches held up billions of pounds' worth of trading on the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange today, forcing City brokers to trade on rival overseas markets for four hours.

The problems with Liffe's Connect electronic screen trading system were received with dismay by members of the market, who suffered a similar, although less serious, collapse only five weeks ago. Graham Farrow, managing director of Sanwa Futures, said: 'This is another disappointment.'

Trading, which on the Euribor contract was due to start at 7am, finally got under way shortly before 11am although Liffe was still investigating the bugs.

About £350bn of trades are done on the market on an average day, but it faces stiff competition from the likes of Germany's Eurex.

Dealers said they had to rely on Eurex and Singapore to trade this morning. Equities contracts were not affected.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/business_story.html?in_review_id=399098&in_review_text_id=346468

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), June 11, 2001