The main stock exchange hubs of the Old Continent and several of the major European financial institutions, including the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE), have kept their core operations without any notable changes, despite the impact that knocked Microsoft services such as Teams, Outlook and Copilot out of action for about 20 hours.
The U.S. technology multinational said, before the end of trading in European bourses, that its platforms were starting to be restored in the various affected areas, after more than 20 hours during which Teams, Outlook and Copilot remained unusable for many users.
"We are seeing continuous progress in recovery in the affected regions, with broader improvements in North America, sustained improvements across much of Europe, and encouraging signs of recovery in Asia Pacific," the company shared on its Microsoft 365 Status account.
Microsoft continues working to stabilize the infrastructure that has already been recovered since Thursday afternoon, when issues were detected in access to and use of Microsoft Teams. The fault spread to the Exchange Online mailboxes and ultimately impacted the entire Microsoft 365 services suite, as well as Copilot, SharePoint and Defender XDR.
Despite the progress, the company has warned that "some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delays in the delivery of emails while mitigation continues on the remaining affected infrastructure."
The massive outage of Microsoft solutions, which lasted more than 20 hours, also reached two of the market’s main chatbots, Claude and ChatGPT, as the connectors that allow their integration within the Microsoft ecosystem were affected, although without impact on their autonomous operation outside these services.
NORMALITY IN THE BIG MARKETS
In this context, a spokesperson for the Bank of England noted that, although the institution was aware of Microsoft’s global incident and its effects on services on a worldwide scale, "all of the Bank’s critical operations are functioning normally."
For its part, the ECB told Europa Press that Microsoft M365 services, including Outlook, "are being gradually restored and returning to normal."
A spokesperson for LSEG, operator of the London Stock Exchange and other markets, explained that, as a result of a global issue with Microsoft Office 365, some internal teams had experienced occasional difficulties accessing these applications, but emphasized that "this does not affect the trading and clearing services of the London Stock Exchange, LCH Ltd or LCH SA."
"Microsoft has indicated that its services are recovering and LSEG is working to completely resolve any remaining issues as soon as possible," it added.
In turn, Euronext said that its markets "are not affected by the Microsoft incident," and stressed that the necessary protocols have been put in place to ensure proper management of the episode.
"We have ensured that the team has sufficient capacity to manage the situation and take on the additional workload. Likewise, we are applying the relevant security measures to securely authenticate and verify the identity of issuers that contact Euronext by phone, guaranteeing the confidentiality and integrity of all related communications," the company explained.