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The London Metal Exchange (LME), the world’s premier non-ferrous metals market, has been highly commended for its business continuity strategy at the annual Business Continuity Awards, held last week in London. The awards are run by Continuity Insurance & Risk (CIR) magazine and recognise excellence within the field of business continuity and operational risk management.
As a Recognised Investment Exchange and Regulated Market, the LME is required to implement contingency arrangements in the event of a major operational disruption (such as a terrorist attack or natural disaster).
The LME chose IBM Global Technology Services to enhance its business recovery arrangements for open outcry trading, and during 2008, a scaled down version of the exchange's existing trading ring was established in a building outside London. The IBM team managed cost-effectively to build a 7,100-square-foot circular trading room - with all the amenities and capabilities of the full-time site.
Martin Abbott, Chief Executive of the LME comments: “Enhancing the resilience of open outcry trading has been a key focal point for our LME in the past 18 months. The business recovery site that IBM has implemented is first-rate, and gives members confidence in our ability to maintain an orderly market at all times.”
Brian Reagan, Director Global Strategy and Portfolio Management IBM BCRS said, "Business continuity and resiliency services help ensure smarter uninterrupted operations across all layers of clients' operations and we are committed to helping businesses meet the triple threat of data protection, security and compliance head-on. The business continuity strategy that the LME has put in place means that they will continue to deliver an efficient trading environment, safe in the knowledge that they are prepared to deal with any operational risk, or trading outage immediately, without this critical backup in place they could face millions of dollars in lost trading activity every hour."
