[Infowarrior] - Bloomberg Terminals Suffer Widespread Failures

[Richard Forno]

Bloomberg Terminals Suffer Widespread Failures

By CHAD BRAY and NEIL GOUGHAPRIL 17, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/18/business/dealbook/bloomberg-terminals-outage.html

LONDON — Bloomberg LP’s data terminals experienced failures on Friday that appeared to stretch from Hong Kong to London.

The terminals, known as Bloomberg Professional, are the company’s signature product, connecting trading floors with its chat function and providing market data and news.

Bankers and traders in Europe and Asia said that the terminals went down Friday morning in Europe, about an hour before the end of the Asian trading day. Some banks were reporting that their terminals appeared to be coming back online in London by midmorning on Friday.

The company, in a statement on its website around noon in Europe, said, “We are currently restoring service to those customers who were affected by today’s network issue and are investigating the cause.”

CNBC.com reported that a Bloomberg representative said that the terminals were unavailable worldwide.

The terminals are used by more than 315,000 financial professionals around the world, according to Bloomberg, and they provide a vast majority of the company’s revenue. Last year, Michael R. Bloomberg returned to the company he founded after serving three terms as the mayor of New York City.

Many larger banks and financial companies have a variety of backup systems as well as alternative data suppliers, such as products from Thomson Reuters, in place to avoid a major disruption.

One sales trader, based in Geneva, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his company did not authorize him to give interviews, said the issues there started around 9 a.m.

The trader’s company has a few dozen Bloomberg terminals and uses them mainly for buying and selling exchange-traded funds and credit and for research. None of the firm’s terminals were able to connect for at least 90 minutes.

When asked what problems the failures created, the trader said: “Problems? Simple: No prices. Nothing. So you can’t do anything at all.”

The trader said that simply switching to a Thomson Reuters terminal was not an option for some. “People are used to going through ‘Berg, and so it’s confusing for a lot of us who never use Reuters,” he said.

When asked what he would do for the rest of the day if the Bloomberg terminal did not return, the trader replied: “Read research and drink coffee. Do it old school.”

In Hong Kong, bankers reported that their terminals crashed not long after 3 p.m., well before the 4 p.m. close of trading on the local stock exchange.

“This is sort of a big deal,” said one Hong Kong banker, whose company’s policy did not authorize him to speak publicly. “What I miss is the instant Bloomberg chats, which I rate higher than trading or data feeds. The fact is, Bloomberg connects 100 percent of the Street, and all that human intelligence is what makes markets hum.”

Another employee of a Hong Kong financial firm said that traders had resorted to using “old-fashioned emails” to communicate.

By 9:30 a.m. in London, some banks were reporting that their terminals were back online.

Chad Bray reported from London, and Neil Gough from Hong Kong.

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