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IT Home reported on November 14 that, according to a report yesterday (November 13) by Singapore's The Business Times, a global outage of several Microsoft software services severely disrupted financial business worldwide, forcing some traders to use phones and WhatsApp, and even bring fax machines back into service to keep business running.
From Tokyo to Houston, trading desks could not use the email systems they rely on for trade confirmations, price reports and client communications. Traders in Singapore said some banks could not complete financing transactions; Euronext, Nasdaq and Deutsche Börse all reported email problems. Indian brokerages warned clients that replies to email inquiries might be delayed, while some companies in Japan handled trades by fax.
Eugene Koh, a sales trader at CMC Markets in Singapore, said tasks that normally take one email and one second could now require a phone call and several minutes. “Everyone has picked up the phone again, and our WhatsApp chat groups are busier than usual, too.”
Ryutaro Kimura, a senior bond strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management, said that although his institution was less affected and trading itself was largely unaffected, a backlog of trade confirmations was putting pressure on back-office settlement.
The outage struck as oil traders were contending with sharp swings in oil prices triggered by news of U.S.-Iran talks. Dennis Kissler, senior vice president in the trading division at BOK Financial Securities, said his team did not realize for an hour that its emails were not going through and only then began calling clients one by one. He told Bloomberg: “We were in a black hole for an hour.”
Platts, part of S&P Global, warned that price updates might be delayed and asked market participants to provide information by phone or instant messaging. Platts also said publication of 22 biofuel prices would be suspended until the problem was fixed.
The problem began shortly after noon Eastern Time on Thursday, November 12. Within about an hour, outage-tracking website Downdetector had received reports from 74 countries and regions. Reports peaked at 19,650 per minute, compared with fewer than 15 per minute on a typical Thursday.
Microsoft initially attributed the cause to “increased load” on its infrastructure in multiple regions, then paused deployments and restarted servers. Microsoft later said a process responsible for establishing secure connections had become overwhelmed, causing servers to stop processing requests.
The outage brought government agencies, traders and businesses around the world to a standstill. Police in several parts of the United Kingdom could not receive online crime reports, and pharmacists warned that prescription dispensing could be delayed. Japan's shared government IT platform, courts in locations from Los Angeles to Singapore, and Australia's intelligence agencies and federal police were also affected.
Microsoft said on Friday (November 13) that it had fixed the root cause of the Microsoft 365 outage. The outage lasted nearly 24 hours, disabling Outlook and also affecting users of Teams and Copilot in dozens of countries.
CNBC and several other media outlets called it “Microsoft's biggest outage of 2026.” Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the disruption and impact of this outage were comparable to the 2024 global CrowdStrike “Thanos” blue-screen outage.
IT Home note: The “Thanos” blue-screen incident occurred on July 19, 2024, when a faulty update from a cybersecurity company that was supposed to protect computers caused large numbers of Windows devices worldwide to display blue screens and repeatedly restart, disrupting aviation, banking, healthcare, broadcasting and other services. Microsoft initially estimated that about 8.5 million Windows devices were affected.
Microsoft said, “We deeply apologize for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners,” adding that “services are recovering broadly and operations are stabilizing.” In a post on X, Microsoft said, “This is a technical issue unrelated to a cyberattack or AI/agents.”