A logo in Arabic and English sits on display at the entrance to the Saudi Stock Exchange, also known as Tadawul, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Nov 4, 2018. (PHOTO/BLOOMBERG)
Equities trading resumed in Saudi Arabia after a technical glitch shuttered the Middle East’s biggest stock exchange for two hours.
“The technical issue has been resolved and trading services are now functioning normally,” the Saudi Exchange said in a statement. The benchmark Tadawul All Share Index closed 0.6 percent higher on Wednesday.
The outage comes as the Saudi exchange pushes ahead with a planned initial public offering
The bourse is home to over 200 listed securities with a total market capitalization of about US$2.6 trillion, including the world’s biggest energy company Saudi Aramco.
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The outage comes as the Saudi exchange pushes ahead with a planned initial public offering. The holding company that owns the bourse has hired Citigroup Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and NCB Capital as financial advisers and global coordinators for the listing.
The outage will not have a significant impact on the IPO, if it’s a one-time event, Al Dhabi Capital Ltd. Chief Strategy Officer Mohammed Ali Yasin said in an email. “If it happens again, then it will raise questions on the reasons behind it, and may affect the upcoming IPO, probably on the valuation front.”
Trading in several exchanges around the world has been disrupted recently. Euronext NV, the Mexican Bourse and the Tokyo Stock Exchange were all hit by outages last year, while New Zealand’s stock exchange struggled to restore services after cyber attacks shuttered the market for three straight days.
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Before that, Deutsche Boerse AG’s electronic trading system was down for hours after a technical glitch affected trading in Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, Croatia and Slovenia.
“Technical glitches can happen anywhere, anytime. It is out of the exchange’s control,” said Joice Mathew, head of equity research at United Securities in Muscat. “This is the first time that we see such an issue from Tadawul in the recent past. I want to see it as a one off event,” he said.