< The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Going with the Flow

BATS Global Markets became one of the world’s biggest exchange operators when it completed its acquisition of Direct Edge Holdings in January 2014. It then proceeded to hit all of its integration milestones. As of January 2015 the combined company’s four equity markets as well as BATS Options were running on a single data center in Secaucus, New Jersey. The postmerger transition “asked a lot from our customers,” says Chris Isaacson, 36, executive vice president and global CIO. All went seamlessly enough that in November, Lenexa, Kansas–based BATS’s average daily matched volume of 1.25 billion shares amounted to 20.3 percent of the U.S. total, up from 10 percent a year earlier. The decision to maintain four exchanges — BATS’s BZX and BYX and Direct Edge’s EDGA and EDGX — went against conventional consolidation thinking. “We found that customers like the choice,” explains Isaacson, a member of ten-year-old BATS’s founding team of technologists; he served as chief operating officer from 2007 until last year. “They want the functionality difference.” BZX, for instance, ranks high in execution quality for stocks in the S&P 500, and EDGX attracts retail order flow from top discount brokerages. Meanwhile, BATS’s share of U.S. equity options doubled year-over-year, to 5.8 percent, in November. November was a peak month for BATS Chi-X Europe, with a 22.9 percent market share; its BXTR trade reporting service had a dominant 62.1 percent. In keeping with BATS’s “making markets better” motto, BXTR brings consolidated-tape-style price transparency to Europe. Also, says Isaacson, “We are working with the SEC to strengthen performance and disaster recovery.”

See also Isaacson's profiles in the 2013 Trading Technology 40 and the 2012 Trading Technology 30.

 
The 2015 Trading Technology 40

1	2	3	4	5
Kevin Kometer CME Group	Richard Prager BlackRock	Raymond Tierney III Bloomberg Tradebook	Jonathan Ross KCG Holdings	Charles Vice Intercontinental Exchange
6	7 Zef Nikolla	8	9	10
Chris Isaacson BATS Global Markets	Bradley Peterson Nasdaq OMX Group	Brad Levy MarkitSERV	Dan Keegan Citi	Ronald DePoalo Fidelity Institutional
11 Mark McQueen	12	13	14	15 Margaret Fox
Gerard Beatty Goldman Sachs Group	Gerald O'Connell CBOE Holdings	Brenda Hoffman TMX Group	Billy Hult Tradeweb Markets	Nicholas Themelis MarketAxess Holdings
16	17	18 Martin H. Simon	19 Todd Plitt	20 A.E. Fletcher Photography
Bina Kalola Bank of America Merrill Lynch	Gil Mandelzis EBS-BrokerTec (ICAP)	Steven Randich Financial Industry Regulatory Authority	Jerry Dobner GFI Group	Michael Liberman BlueMountain Capital Management
21	22 Photographer:http://www.digitalh	23	24 Dennis Degnan	25 Paul Elledge
Bill Chow and Richard Leung Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing	Jamie Selway Investment Technology Group	Brad Katsuyama IEX Group	John Mackay (Mack) Gill MillenniumIT	Jamil Nazarali Citadel Execution Services
26	27	28 Picasa	29 Andrew Harrer	30 Takashi KATO
Robert Cornish International Securities Exchange	Tyler Moeller andJoshua Walksy Broadway Technology	Rishi Nangalia REDI Holdings	Manoj Narang Tradeworx, Thesys Technologies	Oki Matsumoto Monex Group
31	32 unknown	33 Douglas Kurn	34 Luludi/LUZ	35 William Neumann Photography
Alasdair Haynes Aquis Exchange	Veronica Augustsson Cinnober Financial Technology	Stu Taylor Algomi	Luís Otávio Saliba Furtado BM&FBovespa	Tal Cohen Chi-X Global Holdings
36	37	38	39	40
Donal Byrne Corvil	R. Cromwell Coulson OTC Markets Group	Alfred Eskandar Portware	Richard Korhammer SR Labs	Hazem Dawani OptionsCity Software