Moscow Exchange Bond & Equity Markets Halt Trading for Almost Two Hours

According to an announcement issued by the Moscow Exchange , trading on its Equity and Bond markets was halted today for a short period of time. The malfunction occurred at 15:56 Moscow time as a software problem affected the systems at Moscow Exchange's Equity and Bond Markets.

The Moscow Exchange detailed that a certain fund transfer transaction resulted in a discrepancy in the state of several components of the trading system, affecting the central core and perimeter access gateways. The system was halted after the problem had been identified as continued operation of the trading and Clearing systems became impossible.

The system was restored to normal operation at 17:35 local time and trading resumed at 17:50. As a result, the trading session on the Moscow Exchange has been extended until 19:30 Moscow time with an interim clearing session being rescheduled to 18:05 from 16:00. The FX and Derivatives markets on the exchange have remained unaffected by the issues.

Local indices have not been affected much, as the main Moscow benchmark, MICEX, traded up by almost 1% in today's trading session.