By Jake Maxwell Watts
SINGAPORE-- Singapore Exchange said Wednesday it would invest 20
million Singapore dollars (US$14.9 million) in its technology
infrastructure and apologized for a power outage late last year
that halted trading in its securities and derivatives markets for
more than two hours.
The exchange also said it would contribute S$1 million to an
investor education fund and freeze any increases to securities and
derivatives markets fees until Singapore's central bank was
satisfied the exchange operator had met all its obligations.
Singapore Exchange, also known as SGX, said it "regrets and
fully accepts responsibility" for the power outage, following an
internal investigation that blamed the outage on a design fault in
the exchange's power infrastructure and the failure of a backup
generator to operate correctly.
SGX, which is already suffering declining trading volumes and
earlier this month appointed a new chief executive, has battled
reputational damage following the outage--which was its second
disruption in 2014.
The internal inquiry, led by four board directors who were
independent of Singapore Exchange management, recommended changes
to the company's infrastructure and improved monitoring to prevent
further incidents. SGX said in a separate statement it had dealt
with many of the committee's recommendations and would adopt all
others by the third quarter of this year.
The committee found the outage had been caused by a series of
events on November 5 last year that began with a voltage dip across
two substations supplying power to its data center. One of two
backup power generators which kicked in to compensate for the
fluctuation failed due to a hardware glitch, which prompted a
switch-over to another backup system. Due to a design fault at this
stage of the backup, the power supplied to SGX's computer systems
surged, resulting in a momentary loss of power and an automatic
shutdown of trading, the committee found.
Write to Jake Maxwell Watts at jake.watts@wsj.com
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