Intercontinental Exchange Resumes U.S., Europe Futures Trading

By Alexander Kwiatkowski and Matthew Leising

Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Intercontinental Exchange Inc. resumed energy and commodities trading on all its European and U.S. platforms after a technical fault had shut down operations.

Trading restarted at 9:55 a.m. New York time and ICE's three platforms are now ``normal,'' the exchange said on its Web site. Trading was halted at 8:34 a.m. because of ``technical issues,'' ICE said earlier today.

Energy futures including Brent crude, natural gas, gasoil, heating oil and gasoline trade on the European exchange while commodities such as sugar, cotton, coffee, cocoa and orange juice trade on ICE Futures U.S.

``I don't know the technical nature of the problem,'' Intercontinental spokeswoman Kelly Loeffler said by telephone. Loeffler said she didn't know if there was a connection to a computer failure that halted trading on the London Stock Exchange today.

Trading in the U.S. Dollar Index, a benchmark for the dollar against a weighted basket of the euro, yen, pound and three other major currencies, was also stopped, as was ICE's Canadian agriculture contracts including canola, wheat and barley. The Atlanta-based company no longer has any floor trading operations for futures contracts.

Intercontinental is scheduled to switch its clearing operations from the LCH.Clearnet to its own operation next week. The company owns London-based ICE Futures Europe, New York-based ICE Futures U.S. and Winnipeg, Canada-based ICE Futures Canada.

The trading outage is not connected to the clearing transfer, Loeffler said. ``I don't think it's human error.''

-- With reporting by Patrick McKiernan in New York Editors: Jonas Bergman, Guy Collins

To contact the reporter on this story: Alexander Kwiatkowski in London at akwiatkowsk2@bloomberg.net; Matthew Leising in New York at mleising@bloomberg.net.