HKEX Publishes Report of Derivatives Market Outage in September 2019

​Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX), one of the world's major exchange groups, announced that it has completed its review of trading suspension of the derivatives market on 5 September 2019 and published a Public Report of the incident, which includes details on a range of enhancements to our processes, procedures and communications.

On 5 September 2019, a number of EP connections to HKATS were interrupted, leading the exchange to suspend trading in the futures and options markets from 2:00pm for the afternoon trading session and the After-Hours trading session.

After successful testing and verification of the interim solution recommended by the software vendor, trading resumed successfully in the derivatives market on 6 September 2019.

The Exchange stresses that, since the incident, the derivatives market has operated without major issues. Working with the vendor, and following extensive testing and successful completion of a market practice session, HKEX has now deployed a permanent fix to the software that caused the malfunction.

Following a full review of the Incident, HKEX has introduced a number of new measures and enhancements to systems and processes, which will provide better risk management, oversight and communication in the event of future incidents.

HKEX believes that the enhancement measures implemented will further strengthen the resiliency, efficiency and risk mitigation of Hong Kong’s financial markets.