The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) said the building housing the brokerage-firms suffered “limited damage” after fire broke out at the fourth floor of the main exchange building in Karachi on Monday.

As per a statement released by the bourse later in the day, the PSX informed that the exchange compound was affected by a fire today (Monday) at a broker’s office that caused limited damage to the building housing the brokerage-firms.

“However, there was no risk or damage to the PSX office building, trading systems, servers and connectivity at the exchange,” it said.

The stock market saw a suspension for about two hours, from 10:25am till 12:30pm, after fire broke out at the main building where several brokerage houses have their offices.

In its statement, PSX said that amidst the fire threat, the exchange “exercised high security alert and caution whereby no one was allowed to enter the main compound of the building except essential personnel, firefighters and fire-fighting crew”.

“Given the high security measures taken by PSX whereby in the past PSX had faced terrorism threats as well, non-essential persons were not allowed inside the main compound as this may have caused distraction in the firefighting process,” it said, while apologising to its stakeholders for this restriction.

“However, given the sensitivity of the situation, these restrictions were enforced to avoid occurence of any untoward incident,” it added.

The PSX requested cooperation from all persons concerned “until normalcy is fully restored and routine operations at the exchange are resumed”.

In 2018, a fire broke out in rooftop of PSX Broker’s building, which was managed through PSX’s firefighting system within 40 minutes without hampering the Trading and Clearing Operations of the Exchange.