The unprecedented outage that halted trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange for the whole of Thursday is the last thing local authorities need at a time when the nation is seeking to reinvent its capital as a global financial hub.

As China clamps down harder on Hong Kong, some in Japan have seen the opportunity to realize a long-held vision of making Tokyo more attractive to international financial firms and luring highly paid professionals.

Yet the city’s image as an international hub has suffered major setbacks, having come under global criticism over the treatment of former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn while under arrest as well as its ban on almost all foreigners entering the country, including those with valid work visas, during the height of the novel coronavirus pandemic. And Thursday’s exchange outage isn’t winning back any points among foreign executives.