Bankers struck by Outlook outage: "I am paralysed" and "Perfect excuse not to do any work"
Microsoft is having some problems. Outlook is down, taking email and calendars with it, and much of Teams is also affected. The company says it is working to mitigate the impact but that so far, its efforts have been unsuccessful.
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The outage is causing chaos for bankers who use Outlook to email clients. It is also causing chaos for bankers who use Outlook calendars on Teams to schedule meetings.
The South China Morning Post reported problems at banks in Asia overnight. Now those problems have come to London.
"I am paralysed" says one senior debt capital markets banker who uses Outlook to email clients. "Everyone and everything is on Outlook. We rely upon it for the exchange of documents. Teams is not the same and in any case, it's down too."
Another managing director in M&A says the outage is a "big problem" and "a logistical nightmare". - "We can't send or receive emails," he says. "It is the perfect excuse not to do any work today."
Many people in financial services are working from home as it's Friday, adding to the dislocation. "A few people are in the office but it's no better there," says another M&A MD.
People in sales and trading roles are less heavily impacted and can use Bloomberg chat. People in banking say they are being instructed not to use "unauthorised communication channels," so Gmail is out. "Compliance comes first!" says one MD who says he's trying to send documents via Teams instead.
"It's messy," says another M&A MD, adding that people were having to pick up the phone. "Lots of people are having issues with calls," he says of Teams meetings. Calling on Teams still works for some people but it's not possible to schedule new meetings or to email clients. "I am just dialling into already scheduled meetings and hoping people are there."
One buyside professional told us he loves the quiet of the outage. One banker said the PAs are having a great time because they no longer have to arrange meetings and manage diaries.
As long as it's only a day all will be fine, says the DCM banker. He's planning to spend the rest of the day meeting clients in coffee shops instead.
The cause of the outage isn't clear. There are unconfirmed suggestions that it might be related to Microsoft's own automated health-check system, which may have started killing healthy servers. Many are noting that Microsoft is laying off 60,000 workers who might have avoided the problem or known how to fix it.
"We are living in some weird times," says one banker.
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