Bloomberg three-hour shutdown brings chaos to the market
Bloomberg terminals went dark on Friday morning, causing financial chaos and a delay in a UK debt buyback of £3bn.
Bloomberg: Screens went dark
The terminals flashed with a "Connection Lost" message around the world, UPI reported.
Hundreds of thousands of financial workers use the terminals to keep track of movements in the markets and found themselves blind for nearly three hours Friday.
The chat communication tool is " crucial to sharing information during trading," said the news agency.
"The communication chat has become vital to the sharing of information across regions and counterparties. So a global outage like this is systemically important to markets all around the world," Louis Gargour, the chief investment officer at London-based asset manager LNG Capital, told The Wall Street Journal.
"We're flying blind and in our office as our principal counterparties are unable to act as market makers, therefore we're all catching up on admin because there is little else that we can do."
Another market strategist called the reliance on Bloomberg screens "scary."
The Debt Management Office of the British government delayed a £3bn debt buyback, citing "ongoing issues with the third-party platform supplier".