A spilt can of Coke causes computer blackout across global markets

A huge computer glitch is said to have prevented deals in stock exchanges across the world, throwing markets in Europe and Asia into chaos, on Friday after a server crashed in the London office of Bloomberg, allegedly caused by a spilt can of Coke.

The spilt Coke that caused the massive computer glitch, which halted trading in stock exchanges around the world yesterday, makes the fizzy drink the costliest of all drinks, at least for the markets.

Following the computer glitch just at the start of trading, more than 300,000 screens suddenly went offline for several hours, leaving brokers stuck with the terminals.
 
The incident stopped or diverted trades worth trillions of pounds, and a sale of UK government bonds worth £3 billion had to be delayed on the debt markets for several hours until the problem was fixed.

Bloomberg's computer system is the world's largest dealing platform, which is used by most banks and trading floors and the server crash threw computer systems out of order across markets.

Bloomberg blamed a ''combination of hardware and software failures in the network'' for the outage, which was first reported at around 8.20am and lasted into the afternoon.

But reports from inside the company suggested that a spilled can of Coke in one of the server rooms had been responsible for knocking out systems across two continents.

The problems started on Friday morning in London while Asian markets were closed and lasted for most of the following two hours. By the time US markets opened, most Bloomberg terminals were back up and running.