This week, BATS said it“plans to launch what it calls the BATS ETF Marketplace, which will pay ETF providers as much as $400,000 a year to list on BATS. Payments will vary depending on average daily volume,” report Bradley Hope and Leslie Joseph for the Wall Street Journal.
As part of its ETF expansion efforts, in April, BATS appointed Laura Morrison as Senior Vice President, Global Head of Exchange-Traded Products. Morrison previously acted as NYSE’s Senior Vice President of Global Index and ETPs and has accumulated 20 years of experience at the NYSE.
BATS is currently the top U.S. exchange for ETF trading volume, which has become a selling point for new issuers. Additionally, the exchange has adopted a favorable ETF market-making program, which provides incentives to market makers that put up their own capital to aid in tighter bid-ask spreads to promote liquidity and more efficient ETF trades. [BlackRock iShares Raising Liquidity in Smaller ETF Offerings]
“Just a fraction of the more than 1,300 ETFs in the U.S. are listed on BATS, but the exchange operator handles about 45% of trading of ETFs on exchanges and about 27% of overall trading of ETFs on exchanges and private venues, it said,” according to the Journal.