Bloomberg System Failure Halts Live Data for 90 Minutes, Disrupts Trading and UK, EU Bond Sales ⋅ Crypto World Echo
Bloomberg experienced a major service disruption today (Wednesday),causing delays in financial market data and affecting trading activity. Theissue began around 9:30am and lasted for about 90 minutes. By 11am, usersreported that services had started to return to normal, Financial Times reported.
Live Data Failure Halts Bloomberg Terminal
The outage impacted Bloomberg’s terminal system, whichprovides real-time pricing and analytics for financial instruments. Many userswere unable to access live data, forcing some traders to halt activity. Thesystem is used by banks, asset managers, and other market participants aroundthe world.
In a statement, Bloomberg said: “Our systems are returningto normal operations and Terminal functionality has been restored following aservice disruption earlier today.”
Pricing Data Loss Disrupts Sovereign Sales
The problem also affected UK and EU government bondauctions. The UK Debt Management Office extended the bidding window for a giltssale by 90 minutes. The European Commission also delayed the deadline for an EUbond auction by one hour.
Two large investment banks confirmed the disruption to theirtrading desks. One source said that traders could not access pricing dataduring the UK gilts auction and were unable to take client orders.
BREAKING: A major Bloomberg Terminal outage is rippling across global financial markets.Halting live pricing, delaying the UK debt auction, and leaving traders flying blind. One of the worst disruptions in recent memory. pic.twitter.com/Yodmf0NA4m
— Brian Rose, Founder & Host of London Real (@LondonRealTV) May 21, 2025
Traders Use Messaging Amid Bloomberg Disruption
Despite the pricing data failure, Bloomberg’s instantmessaging service, known as IB, continued to function. This allowed sometraders to communicate and agree on deals to be settled later.
Bloomberg first acknowledged the issue in a message. It stated: “We’re currently experiencing a global terminal issue,and our engineering team is actively working to identify and resolve theproblem.”
Bloomberg terminals are widely used across the financialservices industry. Alternatives such as LSEG’s Workspace and FactSet exist, butBloomberg holds a dominant market position. The company’s service costs around$28,000 per year per user.
This article was written by Tareq Sikder at www.financemagnates.com.
