(Bloomberg) — Pakistan Stock Exchange resumed trading after being suspended for two hours as a fire broke out at the main building in Karachi on Monday morning.
There were no casualties and the fire has been contained, Farrukh Khan, Chief Executive Officer at Pakistan Stock Exchange said in a message. The stock market opened on time and then halted between 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. local time to allow brokers to connect to backup servers.
The benchmark KSE-100 Index has gained about 30% in dollar terms year-to-date and is one of the best performers globally, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The gauge rose 0.5% at close on Monday.
Trading started on schedule but several brokerage houses were having issues, said Bilal Khan, head of institutional equity sales at Arif Habib in Karachi.
The fire started one hour before trading was slated to begin and employees were not allowed inside the building, said Humayun Javed, CEO at WE Financial Services, which has an office in the building. The fire started at one of the brokerage houses and it didn’t spread out, he said.
(Updates with stock closing in fourth paragraph)
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