SYDNEY: Trade on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) was suspended on Monday afternoon because of a technical problem, a spokeswoman said.

Market operator ASX, subject to a multi-billion dollar merger proposal with the Singapore bourse, lost an estimated Aus$1.5 billion ($1.53 billion) in turnover from the stoppage, Dow Jones Newswires said. "At 2:48pm (0348 GMT) the market was halted," the ASX spokeswoman told AFP, adding that no decision had yet been made on when trade would recommence.

"It was a technical problem; the confirmation messages that are normally received by the market on the execution of a trade weren't being received for some stocks," she said. "To fix the problem the markets had to be halted." The S&P/ASX 200 was down 0.12 percent, or 6.0 points, at 4,830.5 when trade was halted.

The spokeswoman said all trades made would still stand, but the confirmation messages letting the market and brokers know that they had occurred were not functioning correctly. Trading on the Sydney Futures Exchange trading was continuing as normal, she added.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011 

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