MANILA, Oct 21 – A bomb threat forced a halt to trading at the Philippine Stock Exchange on Thursday but trading resumed after police cleared the building, officials said.
Police bomb disposal teams and sniffer dogs searched an office tower housing the exchange\’s trading floor in the financial district of Makati while hundreds of office workers filed out of the building.
"We halted trading for security reasons. We implemented evacuation measures immediately for the safety of the employees and trading participants," exchange president Val Antonio Suarez said in a statement.
Suarez did not say where the threat came from nor how it was sent. Spokesmen for the exchange said they were checking who received the threat.
After police called the alert off, the exchange sent an advisory saying that trading hours would be extended by about an hour to make up for the time that was lost due to the bomb threat.
President Benigno Aquino\’s spokesman Ricky Carandang said the incident was a "concern" but that the government was happy that no bomb was found.
The Philippine stock market has been on a rally this year amid bullish business prospects under Aquino, who took office at the end of June.
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