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BATS Trading Inc. received approval today from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to operate as a registered national securities exchange. The transition into an exchange, from the firm’s current regulatory status as an ECN, is expected to take approximately 60 days.
BATS filed for exchange status in November 2007.
“It’s a very gratifying day for the BATS team, and an important moment for the marketplace as a whole,” BATS Chief Executive Joe Ratterman said. “As we have stressed repeatedly, our motivation to become an exchange has come from our desire to participate directly in the national market system and compete on a level playing field with our primary competitors, Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange.
“BATS is thankful to all of its subscribers, investors and supporters in the industry, who have played such a major role in our success. We are also thankful to the staff at the SEC, who worked diligently in processing our exchange application, which helped us to meet our internal goal of obtaining exchange status before year end 2008.
“The approval to operate as a national securities exchange gives us even more reason to pursue our strategy of Making Markets Better. We realize there is a lot of hard work ahead of us as we take on added regulatory responsibility, but we look forward to the challenge and the opportunity to provide exchange services to our members,” he said.
BATS urges its subscribers to complete waive-in membership agreements immediately in order to be able to trade on the BATS system when it becomes active as an exchange. For further information on this process, please contact your account manager or go to http://www.batstrading.com and click on the “Sales & Support” tab.BATS averaged matched market share of 10.1% per day in July, with average daily volume of about 1.125 billion shares. On August 14, it recorded its all-time high one-day matched market share -- 11.11%.
