Nagoya bourse top officials to be punished over system breakdown.

NAGOYA, Nov. 12 Kyodo

The Nagoya Stock Exchange has decided to punish its president and other top officials over the Nov. 4 computer system breakdown that led to its partial trading suspension on that day, sources close to the matter said Saturday.

Subject to the disciplinary measures which have yet to be decided are the exchange's four executive officers -- President Noboru Kuroyanagi, Vice President Satoshi Nishikawa and two managing directors Yasuo Sawada and Akira Takamatsu, the sources said.

The bourse will come up with specific punishments against the four by Friday while submitting a report detailing the cause of the trouble and preventive measures to the Financial Services Agency, the sources said.

Its computer system for reporting stock prices and quotations to brokerages and financial news services failed to start up at 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 4, forcing a suspension of trading that was to start at 9 a.m. in all issues on its First and Second sections and the Centrex for young companies.

A separate system for conducting trading was unaffected, but the failure to provide investors with investment tips prompted the bourse to stop trading that morning, according to its officials.

The failure may be attributable to human data-input errors by system engineers at a Fujitsu Ltd. affiliate, which built the bourse's reporting system.

The bourse has experienced system-related troubles six times, including the Nov. 4 breakdown, since the current trading system was introduced there in September 2000. The Nagoya bourse is one of Japan's six stock exchanges.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange has cut wages for all of its nine operating officers by up to 50 percent over a massive computer system breakdown that hit the world's second-largest equity market on Nov. 1.