Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NickSE who wrote (5570)	4/20/1999 4:56:00 PM
From: Paul Berliner	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

BRIDGE PRESS: HSBC sets up emergency center to handle millennium bug By Wilfred Lee, Bridge News Hong Kong--April 20--The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. said Tuesday it has established an emergency center to handle computer glitches over the New Year period as part of its preparations to cope with the so-called year 2000 bug. A bank official said the Hong Kong center will operate right through to the end of this year and into January 2000. The Y2K bug is expected to strike at or after midnight December 31, when internal clocks in some computers that use only the last two digits for the year may click over to "00", which would be read as 1900. The news comes after the bank's entire automatic teller machine network of 900 machines in Hong Kong crashed on two consecutive days earlier this month due to what Hongkong Bank insisted was an unrelated software hitch. Hongkong Bank says it is well on schedule to making all its systems Y2K compliant. The bank's parent, Britain-based HSBC Holdings Plc., one of the largest financial institutions in the world, expects to spend about U.S.$120 million in total on preparations to make the organization Y2K compliant. A spokeswoman for Hongkong Bank said Monday that the bank has had no major problems in preparing for Y2K compliance, despite the majority of its computer system were designed in-house. "We are familiar with the computer system and we should be in a better position to work on any system enhancement," she said. She said that an emergency center has already been established in a bid to deal with any unexpected circumstances during the transition to the Year 2000. "Our key executives will stand-by and none of them will be taking holidays in the passage of 1999 through to 2000," she noted. Asked for the details of the bank's contingency plan for the Year 2000 problems, she said that it has not yet been finalized but that the major parts of the contingency plan are already in place. An official from Daiwa Securities claimed that larger financial companies, like HSBC, will have more problems in attempting to prepare for any problems arising from the millennium bug. "Our operation in Hong Kong is relatively small and most of our computer systems are designed by our vendors. Our vendors are computer specialists who will offer us the solutions," he said, adding the firm here has not faced many problems during its Y2K preparations. "Larger institutions like Hongkong Bank will encounter more problems as their computer systems are internally designed," he added. The Hongkong Bank official dismissed this as speculation, saying that its knowledge of internal systems means it is well-placed to handle problems, and that the group has been aware of and tackling the Y2K issue for some time. End By Bridge News