LSE re-opens after three hour freeze

Trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) was brought to a standstill for more than three hours this afternoon as a result of a technical glitch.

The LSE says it had been plagued by connectivity issues and at 10:33 GMT was forced to put all orders for shares into an "auction call period". It reopened shortly after 2pm. As a result, traders could put orders to buy or sell shares into the system but could not execute them. Investors were given a 30-minute warning prior to ending the auction The FTSE 100 index of leading shares was down 99.84 points at 5,264.97 when trading was interrupted. It has since fallen further and, by 2:35pm, was more than 100 points, or 2.07%, down.