The London Stock Exchange Group experienced a global outage, resulting in the unavailability of market data and a lack of comprehensive updates on company performance. As a result, share prices across all industries have taken a hit, as businesses struggle to function amidst the system failures.
Numerous major stock market indexes, including the French CAC 40, German DAX, Spanish IBEX 35, Dutch AEX, OMX Stockholm 30, and Swiss SMI, have all seen declines. In the UK, all British FTSE (Financial Times Stock Exchange) indexes have dropped by more than 0.6%. The usual regulatory news service from the London Stock Exchange, where companies publish financial results and boardroom movements, was also unavailable on Friday morning and into the early afternoon.
The impact of the outage has been felt globally, with the pan-European Stoxx 600 falling by 0.72%. This downward trend continued when US trading opened, with companies comprising the NASDAQ exchange index falling by 0.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which measures the performance of 30 major companies on US stock exchanges, saw a decline of 0.63%.
While the companies at the center of the outage have seen a drop in their value, their stock prices have not plummeted. CrowdStrike, the company allegedly responsible for launching an antivirus update that caused the outage, saw a 16.63% decrease in their share price. However, some of these losses were regained as the morning progressed in New York. Microsoft, whose cloud computing system Azure is also reported to have contributed to the global glitches, experienced a 2.5% drop in their share price during premarket trading.
Many may wonder how one company could have such a significant impact on the entire world. Although not a well-known name, CrowdStrike is a US-listed firm valued at approximately $83 billion. They specialize in detecting incoming cyber attacks and protecting their clients, holding a 24% share of the cyber security services market. This means that one in four companies could be affected by the IT problems caused by the outage.
In response to the issue, a Microsoft spokesperson stated, “We are aware of an issue affecting a subset of customers. We acknowledge the impact this can have on customers, and we are working to restore services for those still experiencing disruptions as quickly as possible.” CrowdStrike’s chief executive also addressed the problem, stating that the company is “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.” They assured that this is not a security incident or cyber attack and that the issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed. The CEO also stated that their team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of their customers.
