Share trading flounders again

A fault in a computer server at a share registry prevented trading in 88 shares and bonds yesterday morning - swinging attention back to the reliability of the systems that keep the sharemarket up and running.

It was the fourth disruption to trading in eight months and the securities affected were those handled by a share registry part-owned by NZX, Ashburton's BK Registries.

The companies included Briscoe Group, Infratil, Kiwi Income Property Trust, Mike Pero Mortgages, Pumpkin Patch, Tourism Holdings - and the NZX itself.

"Murphy's law" was the explanation from Peter Wilson, the head of BK, who blamed a faulty voltage regulator in a computer server.

Trading opened at 1pm - three hours late for the main board and the debt market and two hours late for the NZAX, the board for small companies.

At NZX, corporate affairs head Rowan Macrae said: "They've promised us a full report".

One sharebroker said the disruption was annoying but not a big problem because of the New Zealand market's light trading volumes - "losing a couple of hours in the morning is neither here nor there".

However, another said: "It's just unacceptable".

The three previous problems were Telecom-related.

They were:

* A halt of more than an hour on January 28 because a Telecom network problem would have stopped some people trading.

* A two-hour-late opening on June 13 linked to the failure of a hard disc in a computer protecting NZX's network connection from hackers.

* A market closure on June 21 when fibre optic cable problems disrupted communications.

Disruptions to trading have dogged NZX since 2003, but the company says it has made a "significant investment" in technology to improve reliability.

A news report in June said technical problems stopped sharemarket trading at least eight times in 2003 and last year, with NZX blaming telecoms links to share registries for six of them.

Market closures have caused friction between NZX and the share registries over where the blame lay and whether they were necessary.

In December last year, NZX moved into the registry business, teaming with Australia's ASX Perpetual to buy BK.

So, if NZX had a complaint about BK, it would be talking to itself.