Office workers, deprived of their usual communication channels when a multi-hour global outage of Microsoft services occurred, turned to alternative and old solutions. Traders, in particular, were forced to conduct business by phone, chat on WhatsApp, and in some cases even had to take out fax machines.
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International credit institutions, including Deutsche Bank, experienced interruptions in access to email, and exchange operators Euronext and Nasdaq also complained about them. Japanese companies were forced to use fax machines to conduct trade transactions, and some Singapore banks were unable to complete some financing transactions at all.
The failure in Microsoft systems continues for the second day as the company tries to get Outlook, Teams and Copilot working properly. The problems hampered the operations of the sales divisions; Richemont, the owner of the Cartier brand, was forced to postpone the publication of financial statements. Work to restore services is progressing, primarily in Asia, Microsoft assured, the company is making efforts to establish access in other regions. Trading on world markets was relatively calm: futures for the S&P 500 index remained virtually unchanged; Microsoft’s shares fell 1.6%.
At Barclays and Deutsche Bank, email access was inconsistent, with some employees working and others not. Some companies started sending out press releases via WhatsApp because email was unavailable. The trading process itself was not affected, said the Tokyo office of BNP Paribas Asset Management, but there were delays in the execution of transactions, and back offices had problems with settlements; traders continued to make deals by phone and fax.
Email has long been proven to be an effective means of communication, and the glitch only confirmed this – what would normally take a second to use this communication channel, under the conditions of the Microsoft glitch, began to require a phone call and took several minutes. The problem complicated an already difficult end to the week as markets reacted strongly to Nvidia’s resignation of Jensen Huang. “Outlook is the app for today’s world of financial transactions. They don’t pay attention to it, but when it breaks, it hurts,” admitted the investment firm Blue Edge Advisors.
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