ASX announcements platform disrupted by operational issue

Embattled stock exchange operator Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) is facing fresh pressure to enact its turnaround plan, after its announcements platform suffered an outage on Monday, forcing about 80 stocks to be placed on a trading halt. 

The platform went down just before 9am and was still not fully operational at the close of trade on Monday about 4pm.

However, an ASX spokesperson said that, as of 6:45pm, it had "largely resolved" the issue and was continuing to work through some non-price sensitive announcements that were lodged prior to 11:22am.

"We recognise that this event has been highly disruptive for some companies, and we apologise to those impacted from today’s issue," the spokesperson said, adding that the exchange was expecting to provide further information about the outage today.

The ASX had said it had published some company announcements received after 11:22am but there was still a backlog that were due to be processed.

"Earlier announcements remain impacted," an ASX statement on its website showed from earlier, adding the exchange was working towards a full remediation of the issue.

The ASX said it did not believe the outage was a cyber security-related incident.

Companies due to release price-sensitive information during the outage were placed in a trading halt, according to an ASX spokesperson. As many as 80 stocks were affected, ASX said.

ASX trading and settlement were not impacted.

Renewed calls for improvemements

The outage is the latest in a string of problems for the stock exchange operator, which has been criticised by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Reserve Bank of Australia for its performance.

ASX chairman David Clarke told ASX investors in October that a multi-year turnaround plan could not afford to fail, as the exchange battled the regulatory fallout following a 2024 trading settlement delay.

Stockbrokers and Investment Advisers Association chief executive Judith Fox said the announcements platform malfunction had highlighted the ASX's operational risk management problems which had concerned the industry group for some time.

"There is still substantial work to be done to improve ASX’s risk management framework and today's outage shows that improvements in risk culture take time, but we need to see that its risk transformation plan is capable of success," she said.

The ASX disruption comes after US-based CME Group, the world's largest exchange operator, on Friday suffered one of its longest outages in years, halting trading across stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies.

ASIC is engaging with the ASX on the market announcement platform outage, according to a spokesperson at the regulator.

The RBA in September criticised ASX's governance, culture and risk-management practices, after a December 2024 settlement-system malfunction raised concerns about the exchange's ability to maintain secure and resilient market infrastructure.