Last week's New York Stock Exchange outage blamed on corporate downsizing at the NYSE

Downsizing at the New York Stock Exchange may have led to last week&#039;s blackout

(Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

published 15 July 2015

People whose jobs were eliminated due to cost-cutting restructuring often blame Wall Street, or at least the profit-driven mania symbolized by the Manhattan street that houses the New York Stock Exchange. It turns out that downsizing may have played a sizable role in the New York Stock Exchange's embarrassing four-hour shutdown last Wednesday. Nathaniel Popper at The New York Times explains:

Since Intercontinental Exchange, known as ICE, bought the New York Stock Exchange in 2012, the company, which is based in Atlanta, has cut hundreds of workers from the exchange. That included almost everyone in the exchange's top ranks.... ICE, which has grown into a juggernaut through a series of acquisitions, mostly of derivatives exchanges, is known for its relentless focus on cost-cutting and efficiency. But the reductions in New York have been under scrutiny because of the possibility that they left the exchange without enough experienced people to manage a crisis like the one it faced last Wednesday. [New York Times]

Along with junior technical staff with little experience managing the NYSE's complicated trading software, traders, analysts, and former NYSE employees cited layoffs of NYSE liaisons who could have explained the problems to NYSE members and senior media officers who would have been able to explain the problems to the press.

An ICE spokeswoman, Kelly Loeffler, said the company has been hiring in New York and had transferred technical staff from Atlanta to New York, mitigating the earlier job cuts at NYSE. People who have dealt with the NYSE for a long time aren't convinced. "There is frankly a level of experience and expertise that isn't there," a former NYSE employee told The Times. "You deal with enough of these situations and you figure out how to recover from them." You can read more at The New York Times.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.