Microsoft blames network upgrade as traders turn to fax

Traders around the world did business by phone, WhatsApp and even fax machine this week after a Microsoft outage that began Thursday, November 12, took down Outlook email and other services. Desks from Tokyo to Houston were left without the email systems that handle trade confirmations, price reports and client contact. According to Bloomberg, Japanese firms fell back on fax to trade, and some banks in Singapore could not finish financing deals. Euronext and Nasdaq both said they were having email problems.bloomberg.com

Old tools on trading desks

"Everyone was back on the phone, and our WhatsApp chats were busier than usual," Eugene Koh, a sales trader at CMC Markets Singapore, told Bloomberg via The Business Times. Ryutaro Kimura, a senior bond strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management in Tokyo, said trading itself mostly kept going, but "confirmations backed up, creating settlement headaches for back offices."businesstimes.com.sg

Reuters reported that one Taiwanese company cancelled a bond repurchase because of the outage. At another Taiwanese financial firm, trades were confirmed by fax, according to CBC. Those trades were purchases and sales of short-term bills that would normally be confirmed by email, Reuters reported. The same report said HSBC reminded staff not to use personal email or WhatsApp to get around the outage, and that two trading professionals saw lower volumes in some markets on Friday.cbc.ca+1

Oil markets lose price data

The disruption hit oil traders while prices were already swinging on headlines about US-Iran peace talks. Dennis Kissler, senior vice president for trading at BOK Financial Securities, said his team took an hour to notice that emails weren't going out before it started calling clients. "We were in a one hour black hole," he told Bloomberg. Platts, a division of S&P Global, warned that price updates could be late and asked market participants to send information by phone or instant messenger. It also said 22 biofuels prices would not be published until the problem was fixed. Platts later said the incident had been resolved.au.finance.yahoo.com

Recovery and fallout

Microsoft first blamed server problems and said it had found no evidence of a cyberattack, The Globe and Mail reported. On Friday it said the cause was a problem from an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced after a recent network change. The company said the underlying issue had been fixed and services were being restored gradually, according to a Reuters-distributed report.theglobeandmail.com+1

Outside finance, Aviva switched to backup systems for its earnings calls, and Workhorse Group moved its results to November 16, CBC reported. For John Porter, managing director of special metals at CCMA, the takeaway was simple. "A phone call still works," he told Bloomberg.cbc.ca+1