Trading across Europe has ground to a halt following an unexplained outage in Bloomberg terminals across the continent and Asia.
Traders arriving for work before the European morning open were greeted by blank screens as they switched on their Bloomberg Professional desktops. The terminals - which come with a monthly price tag of $18,000 per seat - are a key communications tools for the worldwide trading community.
Trading volumes hit the floor in the wake of the outage. In the bond markets, some traders have reverted to old-fashioned voice broking to keep debt agreements ticking over, while others have put deals on hold.
The UK Debt Management Office was forced to suspend trading in Treasury Bills until further notice, deeming any bids already submitted as null and void.
The morning chat has instead moved to social media, where Twitter came into its own with the hashtag #bloombergdown.
Update: Tweet from Bloomberg at 11.00 UK Time:
An hour later:
An explanation?
Finextra reached out to a contact who works on Bloomberg's network and architecture to try and shed more light on the problem. His response was terse: "Can't say. Especially to you."