New York Stock Exchange faces lawsuit over 2015 blackout

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has indicated that it will file a lawsuit against a 2015 outage on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The four-hour long blackout was the worst in the exchange’s history.

The NYSE is bracing for a civil lawsuit from the SEC after a botched technology upgrade paralyzed the exchange for about four hours in July 2015. In an announcement on Tuesday, Intercontinental Exchange, the NYSE’s parent company, confirmed that it had received a Wells Notice that states the SEC’s intention to sue.

Read more

Computer glitch shuts down trading on New York Stock Exchange

Intercontinental Partners received its Wells Notice on December 29, according to the company. On a conference call, Intercontinental Exchange Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Sprecher vowed to fight the suit. A “Wells notice” is never a good sign for any company as it is the parlance for when the SEC sends a letter stating its intent to sue.

“We dispute the appropriateness of the potential charges that the SEC wants to bring and we have a lot of defenses,” he said.

Sprecher also said that he did not believe that NYSE had done anything illegal.

“It was very unfortunate, it was embarrassing and a black eye but we don’t believe it actually violated any law,” he said.

The cause of the outage was reported to be a botched software upgrade that required deals to be rerouted through alternative markets, such as Nasdaq.