Bursa CIO quits....How about the CEO?

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia Bhd chief information officer (CIO) Yew Kim Keong has resigned from the stock exchange, taking responsibility for the hardware failure in the trading system that resulted in an unprecedented one-day trading halt on July 3.

It is learnt that Yew had tendered his resignation and would be on leave from today until his official departure from the bourse at the end of the month.

When contacted by The Edge Financial Daily yesterday, Yew declined to comment.

A source close to Bursa Malaysia said Yew, as the CIO, had personally taken responsibility for the technical failure. However, the rumour mill is circulating that Yew has been made the “scapegoat” and that the powers-that-be had directed a deliberate halt to prevent a heavy selldown in the market that day.

Bursa Malaysia has said the trading halt was purely due to the technical failure and flatly denied the rumours of having received orders from “the top” to suspend trading to prevent any panic-selling.

Hewlett-Packard (M) Sdn Bhd or HP, which is the vendor of the HP Non-Stop Hardware, the existing architecture used by Bursa, has also said the trading halt was due to faulty hardware and not a “deliberate move” to stop trading.

Yew, together with Bursa Malaysia chief executive officer Datuk Yusli Mohamed Yusoff and HP representatives, was at a press conference that week to explain the technical failure. Industry sources said Bursa Malaysia may be exploring the option of claiming damages from HP.

Yew had said the back-up system had taken longer than expected to kick in due to additional measures that were adopted to ensure trading integrity.

A computer science graduate with over 25 years’ experience in information technology, Yew was a member of the pioneer team that initiated the computerisation for the then Kuala Lumpur Stock Exhange.

Subsequently, he also implemented several major IT projects for the industry, including the trading, clearing and settlement and depository systems.

He held various key positions in the Bursa Malaysia group, including assistant general manager IT of Bursa Malaysia Securities Clearing, and senior vice-president, facilities management of Bursa Malaysia.

Bursa Malaysia consolidated its CIO positions into one. Yew was the CIO of operations prior to his appointment as the group CIO in October 2005. He was also the project director for Bursa Trade Derivatives, which was launched on Nov 20, 2006.

Comments:
Is this volunteer or been sack due to hiding reason?
After the Bursa trading failure CEO mentioned: "Since I'm the head of management, I have to be fully accountable", here, and now?
I think CEO should be the most accountable for this.