Deutsche Boerse Outage Halts Trading Across Central Europe

Deutsche Boerse AGs electronic trading system was halted due to a technical glitch on Wednesday, the second such outage this year.

It disrupted derivatives trading and stock markets in several Central and Eastern European countries, and prompting Denmark to postpone a bond auction.

Only about 30 of 99 stocks in Germanys HDAX large and mid-cap index were showing electronic trades on Xetra as of 10:29 a.m. CET. Frankfurt floor trading, where usually much lower volumes are traded than on Xetra, is functioning as normal.

Trading issues on the Eurex Exchange, one of the main platforms for futures products, hampered bond sales in Europe. Prices for German bund futures hadnt updated since 7:47 a.m. in London, while Denmark postponed a bond auction due to the technical difficulties.

Stock trading in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Ljubljana and Zagreb was also down, as these venues share Deutsche Boerses T7 trading infrastructure. As recently as mid-April, another outage of the T7 system hobbled trading across the same set of Central and Eastern European stock markets.

The issue was being worked on intensively but it is not yet clear when trading can resume, a spokesman for the exchange operator said, pointing out that all single stocks on Xetra are also available in Frankfurt floor trading.

(Adds exchange comment, more affected countries, markets)