Lenexa’s Bats Global Markets names Chris Concannon as president

Lenexa-based Bats Global Markets on Tuesday named a new second-in-command, Chris Concannon, who has spent the last 15 years working in the stock trading industry.

He will join Bats, the second largest U.S. stock exchange operator, as president on Dec. 15. He will be based in New York as part of the firm’s executive committee, the electronic stock exchange said.

Bats chief executive Joe Ratterman had served as president since the departure of Bill O’Brien earlier this year. O’Brien left Bats less than a year after coming to the company in a 2013 merger with Direct Edge Holdings LLC.

Concannon comes to Bats from Virtu Financial, where he was president and chief operating officer of the global electronic stock market maker since 2009. Before that, he spent six years at the Nasdaq stock exchange as executive vice president for transaction services and was responsible for U.S. stock and options markets.

Concannon, who was a staff attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission early in his career, is well known in U.S. equity trading and frequently speaks about policy issues. In January, he called on regulators to oversee a reduction in transaction fees as a way to move more trading onto exchanges.

Virtu had planned to go public this year, only to shelve its plans amid the furor caused by Michael Lewis’ book “Flash Boys,” which portrayed high-speed traders, Wall Street brokerages and exchanges as collaborating to rig the stock market.

Concannon also served from March 2012 until this month as a director on the Bats Exchange board, which oversees the firm’s U.S. exchanges and comprises members and trading participants.

“The opportunity ahead for Bats is clear and vast and will be built off of the company’s successes in the U.S. and European markets,” Concannon said in a statement.

On Monday, Bats announced that October was the exchange’s most successful month ever operationally. Bats said its share of U.S. equity trading was 21.4 percent last month, behind the New York Stock Exchange’s 23.7 percent of the market but ahead of the Nasdaq’s 20.82 percent market share.

Bats said its European exchange handled 22.3 percent of the trading volume, its best month this year.

This story was originally published November 4, 2014 at 9:12 AM with the headline "Lenexa’s Bats Global Markets names Chris Concannon as president."