Computer crash hits stock market

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The market stoppage - the longest in more than eight years - meant many investors were unable to cash in on a worldwide stock market boom triggered by the US government's bail-out of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

London's FTSE 100 Index enjoyed healthy gains before the LSE ground to a halt at around 9am with the system only able to reopen at 4pm for the last half an hour of business.

That was well after the markets in New York rose on the back of the US mortgage industry support.

Paris's Cac 40 soared more than 3% in the wake of the news with Germany's Dax up more than 2%. Asian markets were also well up overnight.

Angus Rigby, chief executive of broker TD Waterhouse, said: "Today's issues could not have come at a worse time. To say today's events have been frustrating is an understatement - for both us as a business and our customers. Now we want answers as to how this happened in the first place, and reassurances that it will not happen again."

An LSE spokesman blamed the outage on "connectivity issues", saying: "We are still looking into exactly what caused the issues."

City veteran David Buik, from BGC Partners, branded the stoppage a "shambles" on what might have been the busiest day this year.

He also queried why the world's third largest exchange in terms of share volumes traded did not appear to have successful back-up systems.

"For the life of me, I cannot understand why the LSE system is not run in duplicate. So much and so many clients rely on the LSE's durability. They cannot afford to be let down," he said.