Japanese Firms Turn to Fax After Microsoft Outage Hits Markets

Traders at Japanese firms turned to fax and telephone on Friday after a worldwide Microsoft software failure froze the email systems used to confirm orders, Bloomberg reported.

Ryutaro Kimura, a Tokyo-based senior bond strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management, said trading itself was largely unaffected. “Confirmations backed up, creating settlement headaches for back offices,” he said.

“Desks were still getting trades done by phone and fax,” Kimura added.

Confirmations Back Up in Tokyo

Nikkei reported that emails used to confirm trades had stopped, leaving market participants to rely on fax machines and other workarounds.

A trading desk at a Japanese investment trust said a securities company that uses Microsoft email had asked it to halt new orders. Some investment trusts also delayed the publication of their benchmark prices, or net asset values, the newspaper said.

Government Offices Feel the Strain

The disruption reached Japan on Friday morning as the outage, which began in the Americas on Thursday, spread into the country’s working day.

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki confirmed that government information systems had been affected. Staff were unable to use Outlook and other Microsoft products and were making physical copies, according to reports of his briefing.

A 2025 study by Keyman’s Net found that more than 78% of surveyed companies in Japan used Microsoft products.

Clash Report earlier reported that the outage had disrupted Outlook and Teams in 74 countries, hitting banks, courts and government agencies.

Exchanges Fall Back on Phones

The problem was not confined to Japan. Euronext told listed companies to use the telephone after its listing teams lost email, while Nasdaq and Deutsche Boerse also reported email problems.

In Singapore, traders said some banks were unable to complete financing deals. Indian brokerages warned of delays in answering emailed queries.

Andy Kent, a London-based broker at Kyte Broking, said the outage was affecting the processing of trades more than the ability to make them. “This will have an impact on liquidity as institutions will be less keen to trade until the straight-through processing functions are back up and running,” he said.

Microsoft Says Services Are Restored

Microsoft said on Saturday that it had “completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions.”

The company had earlier said a large number of servers became unavailable after failing health checks, and that there was no indication of malicious or cyber activity.

The outage lasted more than 24 hours. The Swiss Army has already moved to drop Microsoft software over espionage concerns, underscoring how widely the company’s tools are embedded in public institutions.