Monday saw a halt in the trading for as many as 300 different stocks on the London Stock Exchange because of a technical problem taking the market's computers down. The shares affected included the Exchange's own shares as well.

From 3:04 P.M. until closing, the failure of one server led to freezing of all trading. The incident has been a huge blow to LSE, which is currently facing tough competition from rivals such as BATS Europe and Chi-X. This has been the second such huge glitch in the Stock Exchange's functioning in a matter of a month.

"It was the LSE's second significant outage in as many months and is likely to damage further its reputation as it looks to protect market share from rivals", it was reported. Last month's problem concerned LSE's "market feeds" and trading had to be suspended because of the same.

The London Stock Exchange is investigating the problem further and is preparing better to face any such situations in future, all the while trying to ward off competition and keep its reputation intact.