Chaos for traders as Bloomberg terminals knocked offline
The company is currently investigating the outage, which began at 8.20am on Friday and is ongoing, though a cause has not been identified at this point.
A spokesperson confirmed the outage, but was unable to provide a statement.
Many of Bloomberg's users in Europe and Asia took to Twitter to vent their frustrations at the technical problems affecting their terminals, claiming a lack of access to market information is preventing them from carrying out trading activity. However, some reported that the service had returned temporarily.
The market data company says it has more than 315,000 subscribers to its Bloomberg Professional terminals, which cost $24,000-a-year (£16,000).
However, customers of the service have become increasingly discontent with the cost of the service, while a scandal around Bloomberg journalists being able to track the movements of traders in 2013 dented its reputation.
Ovum financial services analyst Rik Turner said that while the outage is "obviously an extremely serious matter" for Bloomberg, it is unlikely that it will result in an end to its terminals being the preferred platform for the majority of financial firms.
"It has held a seemingly unassailable position in the capital markets for decades because, much as the banks and brokerages buying it may have baulked at its prices or some of its commercial practices, the actual end users, i.e. the traders themselves, love its terminals," he said.
"They know their way round them so well, so there is an inertia in their attachment to them that has proven all but impossible to disrupt. Even the scandal surrounding Bloomberg's allowing its journos to track the movements of traders on their terminals for story leads was something that upset the banks themselves far more than the traders."
Nevertheless, Bloomberg will have to avoid further technical issues if this customer loyalty is not to be eroded in future.
Turner added: "This is far from being the seminal moment when Bloomberg's fortunes changed, but the onus is clearly upon the company to avoid it being seen, in retrospective, as the moment when they started changing."