TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada’s stock exchange, the world’s sixth largest, is set to reopen on Monday after its operator said over the weekend that it fixed the error that halted the market for several hours on Friday afternoon.
The rare outage on Friday disrupted Canada’s stock trading, sending investors to rival platforms, and had the potential to dent the credibility of the exchange, fund managers and traders told Reuters.
TMX Group Ltd (X.TO), which operates the Toronto Stock Exchange and smaller Canadian trading platforms, said in a statement on Saturday that the failure of data storage equipment caused the outage.
The saving grace for TMX, which has been vying to host Saudi Aramco’s mega IPO overseas listing, was that the glitch occurred on a low-volume trading day and on a Friday, giving the operator the weekend to resolve the issue.
Jos Schmitt, chief executive of rival operator NEO Exchange, said the market went dark when the outage occurred. “There is a lack of real-time market data in Canada and Friday’s events demonstrate this is a big problem,” he added.
Outages can inconvenience investors and prove expensive for the exchanges themselves. But many of Canada’s blue-chip stocks are also traded on U.S. stock exchanges, giving investors another avenue to trade. Investors are hopeful that TMX has taken sufficient measures to ensure the smooth resumption of trade at 9:30 a.m. (1330 GMT) on Monday.
“I suspect the TSX has undertaken many system reviews over the weekend
