< The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Going with the Flow
6
Chris Isaacson
Global Chief Information Officer
BATS Global Markets
Last year: 8
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
8
9
10
Chris Isaacson
BATS Global Markets Bradley Peterson
Nasdaq OMX Group Brad Levy
MarkitSERV Dan Keegan
Citi Ronald DePoalo
Fidelity Institutional 11
12
13
14
15
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
19
20
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
23
24
25
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
29
30
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
33
34
35
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
