Financial markets hurt by IT outage – but values of companies ‘at heart of issue’ have not plummeted
With the London Stock Exchange Group impacted by the global outage, the usual market data is not available to bring a comprehensive update of what’s happening with companies.
But the financial market reaction is clear: share prices are down across the board as the impact of system failures rips through businesses across the world.
IT outage live updates: Security firm finds cause of global ‘disaster’
Major stock market indexes – which give a picture of company performances on a particular stock exchange – are down as many airlines, train companies, banks, tech firms and media businesses struggle to function.
Across Europe, the French CAC 40, German DAX, Spanish IBEX 35, Dutch AEX, OMX Stockholm 30 and Swiss SMI are all down.
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All of the British FTSE (Financial Times Stock Exchange) indexes are now down more than 0.5%. At the time of writing, the usual regulatory news service from the London Stock Exchange where companies publish financial results and boardroom movements are not available.
It’s no surprise the pan-European Stoxx 600 fell 0.57%.
The market tumbles look set to continue when trading opens in the US later in the day, as stock futures – whereby prices are agreed for the future – are coming in lower.
The companies at the heart of the outage
As for the companies reported to be at the heart of the outage, their value has dropped but not plummeted.
The company which is said to have launched an antivirus update which apparently sparked the outage, CrowdStrike, saw its share price fall 16.63%.
Microsoft, whose cloud computing system Azure is also reported to be a source of global glitches, has seen its share price drop 2.5% in premarket trading.
How has one company been so impactful on the whole world?
Though many will not have heard of CrowdStrike, the US-listed firm was valued at about $83bn (£64.3bn).
The company detects incoming cyber attacks – while protecting its clients.
They have a 24% share of the cyber security services market. It effectively means a company has a one in four chance of being affected with the IT problems.
Company responses
A Microsoft spokesperson said: “We are aware of an issue affecting a subset of customers. We acknowledge the impact this can have on customers, and we are working to restore services for those still experiencing disruptions as quickly as possible.”
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CrowdStrike’s chief executive said it is “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts”.
“Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyber attack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed… Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers,” the CEO added.