FTSE stock market suffers longest outage in years

(Reuters) - A technical glitch delayed the start of trading on Friday on the UK blue chip FTSE 100 <.FTSE> and midcap <.FTMC> stock indexes for almost two hours in what was the longest outage at one of the world's top bourses in eight years.

The London Stock Exchange <LSE.L> suffered a "technical software issue", which postponed the opening of trading until 0840 GMT, a spokeswoman said in an email. The markets normally open at 0700 GMT.

In a statement on its website, it said it was still investigating the issue.

The fault affected hundreds of shares in some of the UK's largest companies, including Shell <RDSa.L>, Unilever <ULVR.L> and HSBC <HSBA.L> and BHP Group <BHPB.L>, worth a total of $2.8 trillion (2.3 trillion pounds).

Traders were frustrated by the latest outage coming during a hectic week on global financial markets, hit by worries about a U.S. recession and the U.S.-China trade spat.

"Investors would have been yearning for a quiet Friday after a week of turmoil for the markets driven by recession fears," said AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould.

"It looked like just such a peaceful interlude was on the cards until (the LSE's) technical issues."

A large number of market participants were also away on holiday, which may have limited the impact of the failure.

Paul Mumford, a fund manager at Cavendish Asset Management said it would be a "major embarrassment" for the LSE amid stiffening competition, rising costs and greater regulation among exchange operators.

LSE shares listed on the FTSE 100 were up 0.9% in early deals, in line with the broader FTSE 100.

This is the second outage at the LSE, which handles about 5 billion pounds ($6.1 billion) worth of volume each day, in just over a year.

In June 2018, the opening auction was delayed due to a technical fault, but trading resumed after an hour.

Prior to that, the market was shut until lunchtime one day in February 2011.

Reuters News' parent Thomson Reuters <TRI.TO> <TRI.N> holds a 45% stake in financial data and news provider Refinitiv. Thomson Reuters will own 15% in LSE after the proposed deal closes.

(Reporting by Shashwat Awasthi, Noor Zainab Hussain and Muvija A in Bengaluru and and Josephine Mason in London; editing by Jason Neely and Keith Weir)