Database glitch hits ASX market announcements

The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has been hit by a "database application" glitch that prevented it from publishing new market announcements for almost four hours.

The market announcements section of the ASX website stopped at 12.11pm before resuming at 3.56pm.

An ASX spokeswoman told iTnews that the exchange had "identified the problem and a patch to fix the issue", though the patch was yet to be applied.

"An interim solution was found," the spokeswoman said.  

"The patch will be tested and implemented over the next few days."

The spokeswoman said the ASX "decided not to apply the fix without testing and while the market was open" in a bid to prevent any potential escalation of the issue.

The issue directly affected 23 of the 2200 listed companies. Most of those affected were understood to be Top 300 firms.

The 23 stocks were to release market sensitive announcements, and were put into a trading halt as a precaution. They are due to resume trading on Wednesday morning.

"ASIC and affected companies were kept informed throughout the afternoon," the spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman said the ASX market announcements office would also stay open until 8.30pm Sydney time Tuesday to ensure all queued announcements are released today, as intended.

Earlier, the ASX had put the publishing problem down to an undisclosed "technical issue".

Last October, the ASX experienced a "connectivity issue" that left some brokers unable to transact for over three hours.

Another glitch in February last year prevented some confirmation messages from being received after trades were executed.

Today's problem did not have anything to do with the ASX's trading platform.