According to press reports, the exchange aims to more than double spending on IT over the next three years in order to enhance its faltering trading systems.

The appointment of Suzuki as technology chief follows last Wednesday's emergency shut down when the exchange was forced to close trading 20 minutes early because its trading system was unable to cope with a surge in sell orders.

The exchange had earlier warned investors that if the system limit of four million transactions was reached it would be forced to halt trading.

Following system tests over the weekend, the exchange said on Sunday that its system could now handle up to five million transactions daily, but it would keep shortened trading sessions which were introduced following the shut down last Wednesday.

Last week's shut down was the latest in a series of problems with the TSE's trading platform and follows an incident last month where the exhange's systems failed to cancel a mistaken order from a Mizuho trader to sell 610,000 shares for 1 yen, instead of one share for 610,000 yen. That glitch came only weeks after the TSE suffered a systems crash that halted trading for more than four hours on 1 November 2005.