BATS Offers Free Listings on its Market
February 9, 2012
BATS Global Markets said it will offer free listings on its main stock exchange for companies whose stock or exchange-traded product trades more than 2 million shares a day.
The announcement came as BATS launched its Competitive Liquidity Provider program for its primary listings business, which was approved in December by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
That made BATS the third operator of a listings business in the United States, alongside Nasdaq OMX Group and NYSE Euronext.
With the new fee schedules for listings, the initial fee for listing will be waived for companies or exchange-traded products that transfer their listings to BATS.
Issuers whose stock or ETP trades more than 2 million shares per day will not be charged an annual fee.
BlackRock became the first company to list with BATS, last month saying it will list eight exchange-traded products with the Lenexa, Kansas, developer of electronic markets.
“As we strive to make markets better for issuers today, we’re focused on driving competition and innovation in the U.S. primary markets through new ‘out of the box’ programs and pricing,” said Joe Ratterman, Chairman and CEO of BATS Global Markets.
The BATS liquidity provider program offers rewards to market makers that offer tighter quoted spreads on stocks.
The program is aimed increasing trading volume for small- and medium-sized companies who don’t have the same activity in their stocks as larger, better-known firms.
Here’s how market makers would be rewarded for posting competitive quotes in a stock or exchange traded product:
• The Exchange will measure the performance of a CLP in assigned securities by calculating Size Event Tests (“SETs”) during Regular Trading Hours on every day on which the Exchange is open for business.
• The Exchange will measure each CLP’s quoted size at the national best bid and national best offer at least once per second to determine SETs. The CLP with the greatest aggregate size at the NBB and NBO at each SET will be considered to have a “winning SET.”
• A CLP must have at least 10% of the winning SETs on any trading day in order meet its daily quoting requirement and to be eligible for any daily quotation rebate provided by the Exchange.
• Eligible CLPs will be ranked according to the number of winning SETs each trading day, and only the Eligible CLP ranked number one, and in some cases the Eligible CLP ranked number two, will receive the daily rebate.
Each liquidity provider must be a registered market maker on BATS and there will be no limit to the number of CLPs that can be registered in each corporate listing.
Here is BATS' Listings Fee Schedule
