The 2015 Tech 50: Chris Concannon

The founders of BATS Global Markets prided themselves on their computer programming backgrounds and distance from Wall Street. They set up shop in the Kansas City area, launching an alternative trading system in 2006, obtained an exchange license in 2008 and took off from there. Today BATS is the second-biggest U.S. stock market operator and No. 1 in European trading. The BATS BZX Options Exchange is fourth in U.S. equity options market share. And the management cast changed in December, when former Nasdaq OMX Group executiveChris Concannoncame in as president, based in New York. He ushered the company into foreign exchange by overseeing its acquisition of the Hotspot platform from KCG Holdings in March (seeDaniel Coleman, No. 12). At the end of that month he added the CEO title, succeedingJoe Ratterman(没有。16拉斯维加斯t year), a member of BATS’s founding team, who remains chairman, stationed at headquarters in Lenexa, Kansas. With an MBA from St. John’s University and a JD from Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, Concannon was head of transaction services at Nasdaq (and a colleague ofAdena Friedman, No. 10) during the acquisitive 2003–’09 period and then was president and COO of high-tech market maker Virtu Financial. This year BATS completed the integration of markets it acquired from Direct Edge Holdings “with no service interruption and no loss of market share,” says Concannon, 47, crediting “the team led by our global CIO Chris Isaacson [that is] as good as I’ve ever seen.” Three major projects are due for completion by November: a London matching engine for Hotspot; a data center migration for the Hotspot U.S. engine; and the launch of a second options exchange, EDGX Options. “Given our history, we fully expect to execute on all three according to plan,” Concannon says.

See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”