London stocks hit by regulatory news glitch
Updated : 15:02
Investors were denied their usual hit of company news on Monday as the London Stock Exchange Group's regulatory news service was choked off by a technical hitch.
Although a Monday in the middle of the Easter school holidays might be expected to be quiet, the usual flow was reduced to barely a dribble, with just a single AIM company release making it through the system at 0700 BST.
Several traders in the City confirmed there was a problem. "It’s a global issue all we’re told but I don’t think much was due out today anyway," said one.
Fidessa, the FTSE 250 listed trading and investment management software provider put out a message to clients. "Support RNS news is unavailable for multiple clients," the company said, adding that it was investigating the cause of this issue.
Broker Shore Capital, when issuing a comment on the financial results of AIM-listed Keywords Studios, said it was "aware that today’s RNS for Keywords is delayed, but that the announcement has been distributed to the public domain separately by the PR company".
By 0815 BST just 11 company news updates had made it out to investors.
The floodgates opened at 0825 BST, however, with a torrent of updates flowing through. LSEG confirmed that 212 had been added confirmed shortly after.
Each year around 300,000 announcements are processed by RNS, with over 70% of all regulatory and potentially price-sensitive UK company announcements originating from RNS. Announcements are visible on over 2m market professional terminals, databases and financial websites across the world, including uk.webfg.com, Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, Dow Jones as well as the LSE's own corporate website.
Small cap share specialist Graham Neary at Stockopedia said: "There is a risk that some shareholders might have been disadvantaged by the delayed release, to them, of important information."
In his daily small cap report, Neary said: "I remain in favour of the US system, where news is announced after the market closes in the late afternoon/early evening."