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

To: C.K. Houston who wrote (5840)	5/25/1999 9:17:00 PM
From: C.K. Houston	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

Wall Street Expects The Best For Y2K, Plans For Worst NEW YORK (Reuters) ... The Securities Industry Association (SIA) laid out complex contingency plans -- a kind of Y2K survival guide -- for U.S. financial firms in an inch-thick report, released Tuesday. The report details measures as simple as having all hands on deck Dec. 31, to limiting trading activity around the New Year to what is commercially essential. Brimming with confidence, Goldman Sachs & Co. Managing Director Gerald Corrigan prefaced the report by saying Y2K contingency planning did not mean problems were expected ... Perhaps the greatest uncertainty facing big securities companies lies in the ability of financial institutions outside the G7 group of nations to handle the date change, he said. But he cited examples in which exchanges have hand-reconciled trades during calamities such as a 30-hour computer failure at the Bank of New York in 1985. ''If you reach the point where a market or an exchange has to be closed it's not the end of the world,'' he added. Corrigan, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said he did not expect there to be ''any meaningful slowdown'' in business activity around the New Year. He did, however, say there would be a distribution change as companies schedule important trades away from the critical 10 days on either side of Dec. 31. Corrigan said securities firms would be working to maintain liquidity in the last 10 days of December and the first 10 days of January, to give them flexibility in dealing with potential Y2K problems. dailynews.yahoo.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DJ Wall Street Asked To Schedule Transactions Away From Y2K - WSJ ... Although the SIA isn't predicting any market disasters as the calendar turns to 2000 from 1999, the group's contingency planning committee issued a series of proposals in its report Tuesday to help firms deal with any possible problems that could crop up as a result of the date change's effect on computer systems worldwide. The timing recommendation doesn't suggest any changes that would affect ordinary stock or bond transactions; in fact, the only suggestion that would even marginally interest the average investor is one that proposes mutual funds move their distributions to the week before Christmas, if possible. Most funds wait until it's closer to the end of the year to distribute income and capital gains to investors. Firms should also tell institutional investors to move their year-end portfolio restructurings to early or mid-December; limit trading to what is commercially essential; and avoid structuring new financing for settlement in early January, according to the report. In the report, the SIA warns that however unlikely, there is still the possibility of problems occurring due to the year 2000 glitch. The possible scenarios range from local brokers being unable to execute trades to entire central-bank systems becoming inoperable. The solutions for any problems that arise range from preparing back-up plans, such as making sure there are standby arrangements for manually assisted transfers of cash and securities, to preparing for any decisions to suspend specific business activities on Jan. 3, the first day the market will be open in 2000. interactive.wsj.com WSJ - Registration Required Cheryl