Blackstone's Refinitiv Outage Upends Currency Trades

(Bloomberg) -- Technological problems at Refinitiv, the former financial and risk business of Thomson Reuters, have disrupted some currency markets, traders said.

The glitches on the Eikon platform limited market liquidity in currencies such as Australian and New Zealand dollars and the British pound, according to the traders, who asked not to be identified. At 12:30 p.m. London time the issue had not been resolved.

Refinitiv said its “major incident management process” was in effect after users had issues logging in and accessing real-time data. The disruption began near the end of Asian trading hours on Tuesday, according to spokesman Louis Auty.

“We fully appreciate how critical these systems are to our customers and are actively working to resolve the situation as soon as possible,” he said. “We apologize for the inconvenience caused.”

Refinitiv’s platforms provide pricing data on major foreign-exchange pairs including pound-dollar and U.S.-Canadian dollar. It handles more than $400 billion in daily foreign exchange trading and has more than 300,000 users connected via its Eikon Messenger, according to its website.

The business was renamed last year after private equity firms led by Blackstone Group LP acquired a majority stake. Last month, Germany’s Deutsche Boerse AG said that it’s in talks with Refinitiv’s owners to buy some of its foreign-exchange platforms.

Bloomberg LP, the parent Bloomberg News, competes with Refinitiv to provide financial news, data and information.

To contact the reporters on this story: Viren Vaghela in London at vvaghela1@bloomberg.net;Michael G. Wilson in Sydney at mwilson176@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ambereen Choudhury at achoudhury@bloomberg.net, Marion Dakers, Ven Ram

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