Dec 01 (NHK) - The head of the Tokyo Stock Exchange has stepped down to take responsibility for a recent trading halt.
The move by TSE President and CEO Miyahara Koichiro follows a technical glitch that stopped trading for a full day on October 1.
The resignation was announced on Monday by Kiyota Akira, the CEO of the TSE's parent firm, Japan Exchange Group. The departure takes effect immediately, and Kiyota will assume the post for the time being.
Kiyota himself will take a 50-percent pay cut for four months to take responsibility for the outage. Other executives will also have their compensation reduced.
The announcement came after the Financial Services Agency issued a business improvement order to the TSE and the group earlier in the day.
The agency told them to take thorough measures to prevent a recurrence. An inspection by the agency found defects in the exchange's internal management.
The TSE says the outage was caused by a hardware problem and a backup-system failure.
The exchange had no rules in place to quickly restart trading in such a situation. It was the first day-long stoppage since trading was fully computerized in 1999.
The exchange group has been criticized for failing to prevent the incident at a time when the government wants to create an international financial hub in Japan.
