Just a day after the National Stock Exchange was hit by a software glitch that shut down its trading platform for three hours, the chairman of the bourse has acknowledged “legacy technology issues and situation as a black swan event.”

In a letter written to NSE employees, Ashok Chawla, a career bureaucrat and former head of the Competition Commission, said the tech glitch had put NSE in the spotlight for the wrong reasons.

“Yesterday’s technical glitch is, proverbially speaking, one more straw on the camel’s back. While such a situation is a Black Swan event, it unfortunately puts the NSE in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. We have handled this effectively, which is indeed our responsibility as the largest exchange of the country,” the letter said.

He further stressed that although the financial year 2016-17 has been a year of many highs and lows and the NSE has done well financially, the exchange passed through a period of challenges on the organisational front, stress over the legacy technology issues, and re-energising of relations with stakeholders across the spectrum from the regulator to shareholders.

Difficult times

“Today, I am writing to convey that we are, no doubt, passing through difficult times, but that we shall overcome. I say this based on my experience of a year as the Chairman of the Board.

“The capability and professionalism of the NSE’s human capital is well known and I have been fortunate to have seen it from close quarters. Colleagues, in this time of organisational stress, let us resolve to treat the challenge as an opportunity. Let us work as a family to once again show that it is not for nothing that the NSE has become a world-class institution in a short span of 25 years,” Chawla said in his letter.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW