Here comes the Bats IPO ...
Here comes the Bats initial public offering ... again.
On Friday, America's second-largest stock-exchange operator is set to go public after a failed attempt in 2012. Bats withdrew its IPO after a software bug disrupted trading on its exchange.
And so here we are.
On Thursday, Bats priced its IPO at $19 per share, the high end of the range of $17-$19. It sold 13.3 million shares, valuing it at $1.82 billion and making it the largest IPO of the year.
This has been the driest year for IPOs since the first quarter of 2009. Data from Dealogic shows that there were only nine IPOs in Q1, raising $1.2 billion. That's down from the $5.5 billion raised in the same period a year ago.
And so if Bats' IPO goes well, it could encourage more companies that have already filed to go public to proceed.
Bats will trade on its own Bats BZX Exchange with the ticker "BATS."
A bit more about the company: An investor presentation showed that it holds a 21.1% of the US equities market, versus Nasdaq's 18.8% share. In Europe, it's larger than the Deutsche Borse and London Stock Exchange, making it the largest exchange in Europe.