LSE Turquoise crashes for second time in a month

The London Stock Exchange's trading system Turquoise crashed for the second time in less than month, just as it plans to transfer its main trading platform over to Turquoise's new technology.
Turquoise, which trades the largest European stocks including those listed in France, Germany and the Netherlands, was down for two hours before it said in an email at 1037 GMT that the system was back up and running.
A spokesman for the LSE Group confirmed that Turquoise had resumed trading, but declined to comment further. The exchange said it was investigating the incident and would provide a report to customers in "due course".
The glitch is the second at Turquoise in less than a month after a problem with a network card forced the exchange to shut the system for over an hour on October 5.
Last month's problem came just two days after Turquoise had moved across to a new technology platform, supplied by the LSE-owned software supplier MillenniumIT.
It is using the Turquoise switch as a dry run for the subsequent migration of the LSE's main UK order book Sets to MillenniumIT, slated for this month.
LSE chief executive Xavier Rolet is keen to migrate Sets to Millennium to make the order book faster and, therefore, more attractive to high-frequency trading firms that generate huge volumes of trades.
However, some of the LSE's largest investment banks clients asked it to postpone the move of the far larger Sets trading book after the October 5 glitch, arguing a repeat of the problem on a bigger scale would be far more serious.
"Today's Turquoise problem will only add to the case for a delay," said one head of trading at a large European investment bank, asking not to be named.
The exchange was set to announce its decision about the timing of the Sets switch this week, a source close to the exchange have said.
On Tuesday, the LSE's pan-European equity trading platform had opened on time at 0800 GMT, according to clients, but the operator in two emails said it was investigating an issue and that it had halted its order books.