NZ stocks: NZX suspends all trading

12.00pm

New Zealand Exchange said in an urgent advisory that "due to an issue with the RMLT (computer) system which has compromised market integrity" all trading has suspended until further notice.

An exchange spokeswoman said the problem was caused by a computer software upgrade and not related to the "Blaster" worm virus currently going the rounds.

The exchange did not know how long it would take to fix.

Last week, around 2500 of Telecom's public phones were knocked out of action by a software upgrade. They took days to fix and some phones are still out of action.

"NZX wishes to inform all market participants that it has closed trading in the New Zealand capital markets from 11:30am today due to an issue arising from a software upgrade at RMLT, a registry of Computershare New Zealand," NZX said in a second statement.

"The market will reopen when NZX is satisfied that integrity has been restored."

It said the Reserve Bank "and other market participants" had been informed.

Trading had been quiet and the market was virtually unchanged from yesterday when the stoppage occured. The NZSX-50 benchmark index was down 1.51 points at 2216.04.

- NZPA