Fujitsu Ltd. said Thursday that President Takahito Tokita will take a 50% pay cut for four months from December over a technical glitch that caused the Tokyo Stock Exchange to halt trading for a full day in October.
"We apologize again for causing great trouble," Fujitsu, the developer of the bourse's trading system, said in a press release. "We will work with the Tokyo Stock Exchange to make sure that steps are in place to prevent a recurrence."
The Japanese information technology firm said four other executives, including Vice President Hidenori Furuta, will also see their monthly pay cut by 10% to 30% for the same period.
The announcement was made after the worst trading stoppage at the TSE shook investor confidence and forced the president of the bourse's operator to resign earlier this week.
The Oct. 1 shutdown was caused by a settings error, which prevented an automatic backup from activating after a memory failure in the TSE's Arrowhead trading system.
The disruption also betrayed the bourse's inability to resume trading promptly in the event of an unexpected occurrence.
The settings mistake was blamed on an outdated manual provided by Fujitsu, but the TSE said it was responsible for the outage as the market operator. Japan Exchange Group Inc. (JPX), the parent of operator Tokyo Stock Exchange Inc., has said it has no plan to seek damages from Fujitsu.
The outage dealt a blow to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's efforts to boost Japan's global standing as a financial center. The Financial Services Agency has issued a business improvement order to the operator and JPX.
