London Stock Exchange

Financial transactions around the world were affected by a tech outage on Friday, hampering operations as workers at several firms struggled to log into their corporate systems.Employees at companies including JPMorgan Chase and Instinet, a brokerage firm owned by the Japanese bank Nomura, have had trouble gaining access to their work stations, according to people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.That has led to delays in some trades, though the companies have been working on workarounds, the people said.The London Stock Exchange said that its RNS corporate news service was unable to publish, citing a “third-party global technical issue” that it was investigating. The exchange operator added that the matter was not affecting securities trading and other services.Norway’s central bank said that it had suffered disruptions when conducting a securities auction on Friday, with participants having been asked to submit bids by phone or email. It later said that the system was operating normally.Other central banks, including the Bank of England and the European Central Bank, said they were not experiencing any technical issues.A representative for Nasdaq said in a statement that the exchange operator’s European and American pre-market trading businesses were working, and that its U.S. market would open for business as normal.And a representative for the New York Stock Exchange said that its market was fully operational and expected to open normally.Eshe Nelson More