The world’s metals traders are dealing with a shutdown at the industry’s most important exchange, where more than $60bn worth of contracts changes hands each day.

A power outage at a third-party data centre has caused connectivity issues, according to the London Metal Exchange. That has cut off at least some traders from a venue that sets global prices for bellwether commodities from copper to aluminium. About $64bn of base metals futures contracts are traded on a daily basis, according to Bloomberg calculations. 

“We are looking into this as a matter of urgency, and are keeping market participants updated on progress,” a bourse spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, which owns the LME, did not respond to an emailed enquiry seeking information on when trading may resume. The LME press office also did not immediately respond to a request for comment

“We received the notice from our broker that the LME couldn’t open for trading due to a connectivity issue at third party data centre,” Eric Liu, head of trading at ASK Resources, in Shanghai. “This will affect arbitrage trades in particular as other exchanges are operating. But we have no options but to wait for that to be solved.”

The over-a-century-old bourse had suffered unexpected shutdowns in the past due to issues including connectivity problem with an external network provider. Services typically resumed after delay of a few hours. 

On other exchanges, copper in New York advanced 0.6% and futures in Shanghai were steady.

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Bloomberg