Fujitsu Ltd. President Takahito Tokita apologized Monday for the system glitch last week that caused an all-day trading suspension on the Tokyo bourse, as the developer vowed to fully investigate the cause of the malfunction.
"We deeply apologize for causing significant trouble to the Tokyo Stock Exchange, market participants and many others," Tokita told an online briefing. "We will continue to make all-out efforts to look into the cause (of the glitch) and prevent a recurrence."
The bourse uses the "arrowhead" trading system developed by Fujitsu. Thursday's outage, the worst for the exchange since it fully computerized trading in 1999, followed a defect in the system's hardware, with its automatic backup failing to work.
The Japanese firm updated the system in November last year.
The trading suspension at the TSE, the world's third-largest bourse after the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market in the United States, complicated Japan's efforts to boost Tokyo's standing as an Asian financial hub.
The government of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who took office last month, is aiming to accelerate such efforts at a time when the status of Hong Kong as a flourishing financial hub in the region has been hurt by China's tightening of its grip on the semiautonomous territory.
The system glitch at the TSE also came as Suga has stated his policy goal is of promoting digital transformation, an area in which Japan is seen as lagging behind other advanced economies.
The system failure "shook confidence in the Japanese financial system," Tokita admitted, saying Fujitsu will seek to restore trust with its technology and expertise.
It was not the first time that the TSE has experienced a trade suspension while using Fujitsu's system.
A programming error led to a suspension in the trading of all stocks for about three hours in 2005. In 2012, a server in the trading system failed but a backup was not switched on, prompting more than 200 issues to temporarily stop trading.
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