IT execs ‘fined’ for stock exchange network outage

Senior business and IT management executives at the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) have been “fined” after a major network outage earlier this month, the exchange confirmed.

TSE president and CEO Atsushi Saito is taking a 30 percent hit on his pay for two months. TSE chief operating officer Hiroyuki Iwakuma, CIO (IT) Yoshinori Suzuki and fellow executive officer Yasuhiro Yoshida will be docked 30 percent of one month’s pay. Also, two managers in the IT department received so-called “strict admonishments”.

Senior Japanese executives are known for making humble apologies in public when things go wrong, but the salary cuts – although temporary – are something customers of western network providers, who don’t provide a full service, might also become fans of.

The TSE has also been issued with a business improvement order by Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA), following a 90 minute trading suspension – the second major systems outage to hit the exchange this year.

On 7 August the TSE was hit by a network hardware failure, and the data transfer process to a standby back-up switch failed to automatically happen. Trading therefore had to be suspended.

A server fault caused a major trading outage at the TSE in February this year, and there were other TSE outages in 2005 and 2008.
The FSA has ordered the exchange to suggest measures to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen again. These measures will then be checked by outside experts before they are implemented.