From today's Electronic Telegraph:

FT kills records in Y2K bug scare By Gary Parkinson

Never mind the medium, it's the message that counts

UP to 25,000 investors had online records of their portfolios wiped out after bosses at the Financial Times ruled it would be too costly to make its share tracking software Millennium bug resistant.

Former investors who used the FTQuicken site to monitor the value of their equities must now re-input details of shareholdings into a new FT site, which could take several hours for bigger portfolios. The FT scrapped its online venture with Quicken, a US specialist in personal finance software, to set up its site, FT Your Money, on December 5.

FT Your Money says it knew the older site was unprotected from the bug, but expense and the new venture meant making FTQuicken Y2K compliant was not cost-effective. Copies of investment records were made before the January 1 deadline. FTQuicken investors were e-mailed before the December 5 switch telling them how to re-register.

The FT says worries about breaches of the Data Protection Act prevented a wholesale transfer of information from one site to the other. FT Your Money has received more than 100 calls from confused investors and is offering to re-input details for anyone with difficulties.

It concedes that some investors have not re-registered with the new site, but says the "vast majority" have made the switch. No exact figures are available. FT Your Money is billed as a comprehensive personal finance site. It looks at budgeting, investment opportunities, allows execution-only business and offers news stories and product details.

Nic Cicutti, editor of FT Your Money, says: "We always knew that FTQuicken was potentially non-Y2K compliant. The cost of making something Y2K compliant is millions of pounds, and then closing it down a few weeks later is not a good use of our resources. Clearly we are sorry if anyone has been inconvenienced."

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), January 17, 2000

Answers

No such portfolio problem on this side of the water -- I've been keeping some sample portfolios on Quicken for several months -- they're still alive. Why would a substandard version be installed in England?

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 18, 2000.