Dozens of company announcements delayed or distributed unevenly, including price-sensitive information
While many stocks around the world saw rapid gains in the early hours of trading in the New Year, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) suffered a glitch that delayed a series of corporate announcements from companies such as Lamprell and others, hitting their stock prices at the outset of 2013.
The malfunction in the Regulatory News Service (RNS) of the LSE lasted until about 8.36 am, when more than 100 announcements were published in less than a minute, according to RNS records. Bloomberg News reports that RNS had stopped publishing releases between 5.00 am and 8.36 am.
The Financial Times reports that important company announcements delayed by the RNS glitch ‒ which the LSE described as stemming from ‘technical issues’ ‒ include a statement about specialist engineering company Lamprell, which was the subject of a series of profit warnings in 2012.
According to the statement (dated January 1 on Lamprell’s corporate website), Lamprell submitted an announcement on January 1 that its lenders had waived certain borrowing conditions before an end-of-year deadline, adding that ‘the working capital position of the company has improved significantly in recent months and we have ended the year with a net cash position in the region of $100 mn.’
The statement, while delayed on RNS, was submitted to several newswires. After the RNS glitch was sorted and the statement distributed as normal, Lamprell shares rose by up to 20 percent.
Last year, the LSE underwent a ‘detailed customer consultation process’ that could end with a switch in brokers for the service, according to an LSE press release. ‘Working with vendors and other market participants, the consultation will include a comprehensive administrative process to measure the number of professional consumers of RNS information,’ the LSE said. ‘In addition, the consultation will evaluate such areas as service levels, fee structures, the regulatory environment, innovation and product development.’
The LSE says the RNS carries 175,000 announcements a year and includes 70 percent of all price-sensitive announcements regarding companies in the UK.
‘Announcements are visible on more than 2 mn market professional terminals, databases and financial websites across the world, including key vendor services such as Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, Dow Jones and the LSE’s own corporate website,’ notes a description on the LSE website.
