Sydney Futures Exchange's Market Disruption

2 March 2000: At 3.55pm EST today, the market of the Sydney Futures Exchange was halted due to a systems failure, preventing the last 35 minutes of the day's trading and delaying the opening of the evening session until 7.05pm EST. The failure was similar to the market disruption experienced last Thursday, 25 February. After consulting its systems developers, SFE has received a software upgrade it believes should rectify the problems. This is currently being tested and is scheduled to be implemented this weekend, 4 and 5 March. Mr Rick Holliday-Smith, SFE Chairman, said: "Notwithstanding SFE's successful transition to full-time electronic trading last November, we are concerned about the recent disruptions to SFE's market. In conjunction with our systems developers, we believe we have identified the problems and developed a remedy. "However, SFE will not be satisfied until the system achieves stability on an ongoing basis. We will make every effort to locate and prevent potential problems from arising. Ensuring the continuity and reliability of our futures and options markets is SFE's highest priority."