In its latest assault on America's established operators, Kansas City-based Bats Global Markets has launched a second US equities exchange.
Bats Y-Exchange (BYX), located at Savvis' New Jersey data centre complex, went live today with trading in four US equities symbols. All symbols will added by 22 October.
The operator is opening with an aggressive pricing regime, offering liquidity removers a $0.0003 per share rebate, the highest among US exchanges for all securities. There is no charge to add displayed liquidity to the BYX book.
BYX joins Bats Exchange, which went live in August 2008 after converting from an electronic communications network. It has since taken significant market share from the country's major players Nyse Euronext and Nasdaq OMX.
Joe Ratterman, CEO, Bats Global Markets, says: "With BYX, we are offering market participants a second Bats platform for trading US equities built on our world-class technology with differentiated pricing and routing. Industry feedback has exceeded our expectations with more than 100 firms approved as BYX members and over 50 already certified to begin trading."
Bats also runs a European platform and has recently been heavily linked with a bid for rival MTF Chi-X Europe.