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NZX Market Opening Delay - An Explanation

Date 23/09/2003

NZX today experienced some technical difficulties which resulted in the market opening being delayed.

"The problem occurred due to an operational fault identified on the Summary Instrument Board enquiry screen, on trader workstations. The fault impacted on certain market participants who would not have been able to participate in FASTER trading, had we opened at 10.00am", said Chris Corke, NZX Chief Information Officer.

"A decision was therefore taken to delay opening, in order to rectify the problem and ensure that the market was trading with full NZX Firm participation."

NZX re-opened the market for trading at 2.45pm today.

NZX has recently completed a comprehensive IT audit in conjunction with two external consulting firms. As a result of this audit, NZX is now well underway with plans to address the issues that were identified, specifically in relation to network infrastructure and software.

As part of this review NZX recently appointed Chris Corke as CIO, who will drive these changes.