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The 2016 Trading Technology 40: Chris Isaacson

No. 3 Chris Isaacson, Global Chief Information Officer, BATS Global Markets

3
Chris Isaacson
Global Chief Information Officer
BATS Global Markets
Last year: 6

As recently as 2008, BATS Global Markets — then BATS Trading — was an alternative trading system making the transition to full exchange status. Almost overnight, in January 2009, BATS was the third-largest exchange company in notional value traded, and it was upward from there, with virtually every leap assisted by, if not dependent on, the technology Chris Isaacson had been developing since the firm’s start in 2005. In early 2015, BATS completed the integration of the Direct Edge exchanges it had acquired the year before, and from September through November it was the world’s biggest equity exchange operator, according to World Federation of Exchanges data. In December, BATS’s U.S. equity market share was 21 percent, up from 20.8 percent a year earlier; BATS Chi-X Europe remained No. 1 in its markets at 23.7 percent, rising from 22 percent; the opening of a second U.S. options market pushed BATS’s share of that asset class to 10.1 percent from 6.3 percent a year earlier; and foreign exchange platform Hotspot, acquired last March from KCG Holdings, boosted its market share to 12.7 percent from December 2014’s 11.6 percent. Lenexa, Kansas–based BATS Global Markets filed in December for an IPO, conjuring memories of its most glaring failure, the March 2012 systems crash that aborted the previous IPO attempt. Isaacson, 37, global CIO since 2014 after seven years as COO, has his sights set on market-structure and regulatory developments that promise “greater transparency and efficiency across the trading landscape.” These include technology-enabled agency trading in forex, Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) preparations in Europe and “across all markets innovation and optimization in clearing and settlement with the potential use of blockchain technology.”

2016 Trading Technology 40

1. Raymond Tierney III
Bloomberg
2. Richard Prager
BlackRock
3. Chris Isaacson
BATS Global Markets
4. Jonathan Ross
KCG Holdings
5. Bradley Peterson
Nasdaq
6. Brad Levy
Markit
7. Dan Keegan
Citi
8. Ronald DePoalo
Fidelity Institutional
9. Raj Mahajan
Goldman Sachs Group
10. Ari Studnitzer
CME Group
11. Mayur Kapani
Intercontinental Exchange
12. Gerald O’Connell
CBOE Holdings
13. Nicholas Themelis
MarketAxess Holdings
14. Gil Mandelzis
EBS BrokerTec (ICAP)
15. Bill Chow and Richard Leung
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
16. Rob Park
IEX Group
17. Philip Weisberg
Thomson Reuters
18. John Mackay (Mack) Gill
MillenniumIT
19. Robert Cornish
International Securities Exchange
20. Paul Hamill
Citadel Securities
21. Eric Noll
Convergex
22. Tyler Moeller and Joshua Walsky
Broadway Technology
23. Rishi Nangalia
REDI Holdings
24. Veronica Augustsson
Cinnober Financial Technology
25. Alasdair Haynes
Aquis Exchange
26. Manoj Narang
Mana Partners
27. Gaurav Suri
Arcesium
28. Robert Sloan
S3 Partners
29. Anton Katz and Stephen Mock
AQR Capital Mgmt
30. Stu Taylor
Algomi
31. D. Keith Ross Jr.
PDQ Enterprises
32. Donal Byrne
Corvil
33. Alfred Eskandar
Portware
34. R. Cromwell Coulson
OTC Markets Group
35. Masayuki Hosaka
Rakuten
36. Peter Maragos and David Karat
Dash Financial
37. Amar Kuchinad
Electronifie
38. Jennifer Nayar
SR Labs
39. Dave Snowdon
Metamako
40. Dan Raju
Tradier

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