Matif suffers teething problems with electronic system

Traders at the French derivatives exchange Matif, claim technical hitches with the electronic trading system led to late opening twice last week.

The system is currently considered one of the most advanced in the world, but these failures are the latest in a series of problems since the exchange migrated from pit-trading last April.

The UK derivatives exchange, Liffe (London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange), which will begin to roll out full-time electronic trading in November this year, said it is not worried by Matif's teething problems.

Liffe publicly stated that: "The system built onto the Liffe Connect trading host will operate active price control functionality as opposed to fixed price limits. So it will not hold or halt the market in the same way." However, it said market trading will slow down to cope with high volumes.

A spokesman for Liffe said: "A lot of the problems in other systems are happening because they didn't run the trial period for long enough. We are having a three-month trial period, and hopefully all the problems will come out in that time."

Matif also claimed a large part of its problems stemmed from traders having difficulties with the system. But Liffe is confident its traders will not come across the same difficulties, because it plans to run training schemes and set up help desks before trading starts.

Meanwhile Matif announced last week that software vendors PAT systems and Trading Technologies are developing front-end solutions for derivatives users, so members will be able to trade long-term gilt futures on the electronic exchange.