Germans fluff their date with destiny

[Guest guest]

Jill Treanor and John Cassy

Friday September 10, 1999

Technical problems at the German futures and options exchange yesterday

fuelled fears in City dealing rooms that the markets could face crisis as a

result of the millennium computer bug.

 

The computer glitches, which prevented some firms from trading and running the

risk of potential losses, took place yesterday - numerically written 9.9.99.

Market regulators and computer experts had seen yesterday, while not quite a

dry run for the turn of the year, as a test for systems ahead of the real

millennium bug.

 

Yesterday was significant because the date - 9.9.99 - was used in old computer

conventions to indiciate to programs that they should stop performing certain

tasks.

 

Any hiccups which emerge after yesterday's trading will send severe warnings

to the markets about the potential for meltdown in trading early in the new

year if computers fail to recognise the last two digits of the year 2000.

 

Dealers fear that if computers stop working they will not be able to trade,

which might leave them exposed to enormous losses.

 

The rumours of problems were not confined to the German exchange. The internal

message board at one leading investment bank in London warned of problems with

price information received from Simex, the Singapore futures exchange. The

message, posted as a warning by the bank's traders in Singapore, said that the

problems were caused by 9/9/99 glitches.

 

The Eurex exchange in Frankfurt insisted that problems incurred by its clients

first thing yesterday morning were not connected to the 9/9/99 computer

problem. However, brokers claimed that in response to their initial inquiries,

the exchange had blamed the date problem.

 

Some users of the electronic German exchange had been forced to re-start their

computers yesterday because they had stalled overnight. A spokesman for Eurex

said: "The problems which occurred were not related to Y2K or the 9/9/99

problem."

 

Eurex said the problem, quickly resolved, was caused by the failure of some

computers to receive a signal, which could have happened on any day of the

week.

 

One source in London insisted yesterday: "Eurex admitted to members early on

that it was having 9/9/99 problems."

 

The City regulator, the Finanial Services Authority, had asked the firms it

regulates to alert it to any problems encountered, but had not been told of

any.