The 2013 Tech 50: Joe Ratterman

The rapid ascent of BATS Global Markets from its origins in 2005 as an alternative trading system would have gone uninterrupted but for a rather painful stumble: a technical breakdown in March 2012 that thwarted the company’s own IPO. It is a testament to the Lenexa, Kansas, organization’s technological resilience and the management team led by Joe Ratterman that BATS stayed on course. The trajectory is particularly positive in Europe, where the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority in May designated as a recognized investment exchange BATS Chi-X Europe, the biggest pan-European equity-trading venue, then with a 22.4 percent market share. “We have the approval; now we need to go to work,” says Ratterman, 47, one of 13 founding employees and CEO since 2007, when Dave Cummings left for the high frequency trading firm he’d founded, Tradebot Systems. The “next logical conclusion” is to “allow issuers who aren’t country-specific to list and have broad distribution across Europe in one platform,” says Ratterman. In the U.S., where BATS gained equity exchange status in 2008, it has slipped behind Direct Edge (see William O’Brien, No. 25) into fourth place, but it still has a solid 10 percent share. Ratterman says plans are afoot to energize BATS Options, which claims a lowly 4 percent of that asset class.