Government bond auctions in the UK and European Union were delayed on Wednesday after a widespread technical outage hit Bloomberg’s terminal services, a popular tool for global financial markets.
The UK’s Debt Management Office (DMO) extended the bidding window for its gilt auction by 90 minutes, pushing the close to 11:30 a.m. London time. The European Commission also delayed the deadline for its EU bills sale by one hour to 1 p.m. Brussels time.
Both agencies cited “ongoing market-wide Bloomberg system issues” for the disruption, noting that new deadlines were contingent on the restoration of full functionality.
Bloomberg’s $28,000-a-year terminal service — used by traders, analysts, and portfolio managers to monitor markets, run analytics, and execute trades — suffered a global outage early Wednesday, leaving users without live pricing data and disrupting trading activity.
By 11:00 a.m., most services were reported to be back online. “Our systems are returning to normal operations and Terminal functionality has been restored following a service disruption earlier today,” Bloomberg said in a statement.
Despite the recovery, the outage rattled markets and highlighted the sector’s reliance on a single data provider. “We’ve been told not to trade. I can’t remember this level of non-functioning,” said one London-based fund manager. Another added: “Would you bet on a match that you can’t see or know the score?”
While rival services like LSEG’s Workspace and FactSet exist, Bloomberg is widely regarded as the gold standard for market data and communications. The firm’s instant messaging system (IB) remained operational throughout the disruption, allowing some deals to proceed manually for later settlement.
The episode drew renewed attention to operational risk in financial infrastructure. “This is a reminder of overdependencies,” one European investor said.
A portfolio manager at a major asset management firm said the disruption affected more than just trading. “I’m unable to run my day-to-day process,” he said. “I even have a presentation coming up that depends on Bloomberg-based spreadsheets.”
Bloomberg’s help desk acknowledged the problem in a 9:55 a.m. post, stating: “We’re currently experiencing a global terminal issue, and our engineering team is actively working to identify and resolve the problem.”
The incident is the latest in a series of tech glitches to impact European market operations. The UK’s Crest settlement system went down in 2020 and again in 2022, while the Bank of England was forced to postpone a repo operation last year due to auction platform issues. The ECB’s securities settlement system also experienced a temporary shutdown earlier this year due to hardware failure.
