The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) is to spend Y3.2 billion - or $27.06 million - on boosting the order handling capacity of its electronic dealing system to 12 million trades a day by May.
The dealing system currently handles around nine million orders each day. According to press reports, the exchange says it plans to increase daily order handling capacity to 14 million a day by the end of the year.
The exchange will also increase the number of trasnactions its dealing platform can execute each day from the currrent five million to seven million transactions.
The exchange said last month that it will more than double spending on IT over the next three years in order to enhance its faltering trading systems. The move followed an emergency shut down of the system on 17th January because it was unable to cope with a surge in sell orders. TSE has since curbed trading and has delayed the start of each day's afternoon session by 30 minutes.
The systems shut down was the latest in a series of problems with the TSE's trading platform. In December the exhange's systems failed to cancel a mistaken order from a Mizuho trader to sell 610,000 shares for one yen, instead of one share for Y610,000. That glitch came only weeks after the TSE suffered a systems crash that halted trading for more than four hours on 1 November 2005.