BATS poaches NYSE ETF head

BATS Global Markets has hired a senior exchange-traded funds expert from NYSE, marking its desire to grow that arm of its business.

BATS Global Markets has hired a senior exchange-traded funds (ETF) expert from NYSE, marking its desire to grow that arm of its business.

Laura Morrison joins as senior vice president and global head of exchange-traded products at BATS. She has spent the past eight years as senior vice president of global index and exchange-traded products at NYSE, where she led its ETF listings and trading business, as well as NYSE indices.

Bryan Harkins, executive vice president and head of US markets at BATS, said: “We’ve long held Laura in high esteem as a thought leader and we are excited she’s joining the team with the mission of making BATS the number one global ETF listings marketplace.”

BATS has been aggressively expanding its ETF operations in recent years, and said it now has a US trading market share of 25.5%, higher than both NYSE and Nasdaq.

In Europe, BATS Chi-X Europe entered the ETF space in late 2013 and has been growing the availability of ETFs listed and traded on its European platform.

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