When Australian Securities Exchange chief executive Dominic Stevens and its departing chairman, Rick Holliday-Smith, were grilled by Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe and senior regulators at the central bank’s boardroom in early December, the ASX’s technology failures were a prickly talking point.

According to sources who have spoken to the ASX leaders, Lowe and the then-acting chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Karen Chester, were deeply troubled by the November 16 software glitch that took out the nation’s trading bourse for almost the entire day.