BATS Global Markets could raise up to US$100 million through its initial public offering today, helping to support the market operator's planned expansion into new asset classes and geographies.
BATS will sell 6,296,829 shares of Class A common stock at US$16 per share.Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Credit Suisse are acting as join book-running managers for the BATS IPO. Deutsche Bank Securities, Wedbush Securities, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Raymond James, Sandler O’ Neill and Partners, Rosenblatt Securities and Nomura are acting as co-managers.
The money raised will help BATS support its expansion plans. In its IPO filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission on 23 February, BATS revealed that it plans to enter two new markets – likely to be Brazil and Canada – by 2014 and added that it was considering an expansion into new instruments such as US treasury securities and other fixed income products, FX and US derivatives.
Founded in 2005, BATS operates two US exchanges, BATS BZX and BATS BYX, as well as its BATS Europe multilateral trading facility (MTF). In November, the company also acquired pan-European MTF Chi-X Europe, giving the firm a combined pan-European market share of around 30%.
One of BATS’ selling stockholders has granted the IPO underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 944,524 shares. BATS will not receive any proceeds from the sale of any shares by the selling stockholders. The offering is expected to close on 28 March.