About Bats Global (adapted from Bats Global prospectus):
Bats Global Markets is a global financial technology company that develops and operates electronic markets for the trading of listed cash equity securities in the United States and Europe and listed equity options in the United States. In addition to being the third largest exchange operator in the United States after NYSE Euronext and The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc., based on total market share of the markets that we operate, Bats Global Markets operates the second largest pan-European multilateral trading facility, or MTF. For the second quarter of 2011, Bats Global Markets had a 10.8% share of the U.S. equity market and a 3.9% share of the U.S. equity options market. In Europe, for the same period, they had a 5.6% share of European trading in the securities available for trading on BATS Europe. For the six months ended June 30, 2011 and the year ended December 31, 2010, they derived 91.5% and 96.8%, respectively, of their total revenues from the trading of listed cash equities securities in the United States. In February 2011, Bats Global Markets signed a definitive agreement to acquire, subject to regulatory approval, Chi-X Europe the operator of the largest pan-European MTF. For the second quarter of 2011, Chi-X Europe had a 17.4% share of European trading in the securities available for trading on Chi-X Europe.
In the United States, Bats Global Markets operates two national securities exchanges, BZX and BYX. Both trade listed cash equity securities and exchange-traded products, such as exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, but each targets different market segments by offering different pricing alternatives. BZX also operates a market for trading listed equity options. In Europe, Bats Global Markets's MTF offers trading in listed cash equity securities from within 25 European indices, in addition to ETFs, exchange-traded commodities and international depositary receipts. Bats Global Markets's platform is designed to facilitate price discovery by encouraging the quoting of competitive, displayed prices. Their platform also offers opportunities to post undisplayed, or "dark," trading interest on their U.S. and European order books, and in Europe, they operate a separate dark pool.
Bats Global Markets's principal objective is to make markets better by minimizing inefficiencies and mitigating trade execution risk for market participants. They minimize inefficiencies in part by offering low-cost, rapid, trade execution. They mitigate trade execution risk through offering ultra-low latency order handling through their trading system. In particular, by offering ultra-low latency order handling, Bats Global Markets members can very quickly place, modify or cancel orders on Bats Global's markets. This ability gives their members greater control over their orders, enabling them to rapidly respond to changing market conditions and mitigate trade execution risk. Unlike traditional market operators, Bats Global Markets is a technology company at their core. They developed, own and operate the BATS trading platform. They claim; "Our proprietary platform powers all of our markets and is designed to offer one of the fastest and most reliable trading systems available."
This description is adapted from Bats Global prospectus. This description is not intended to be a recommendation to buy stock from this company. We do not claim that all of the statements above were researched and found to be true. We present them as a general description based on what the company has said about itself at the time that they submitted their prospectus for an IPO offering. To see the company's full description, view their prospectus.. 
