BATS Global Markets has withdrawn its planned initial public offering, which was scheduled to close this coming Wednesday.
The exchange company announced yesterday that about 6.3 million shares of its common stock would be made available to the public at $16 per share.
The timing proved inauspicious, as a system error on BATS today caused incorrect price quotes for Apple, halting trading of the computer giant’s stock. BATS said the erroneous trades were broken under the exchange’s clearly erroneous trade policy.
Joe Ratterman, president and chief executive officer of BATS, said in a statement that although the affected market has reopened, the exchange would still halt its plans for a public offering.
“We believe withdrawing the IPO is the appropriate action to take for our company and our shareholders,” Ratterman said.
BATS’ own shares fell precipitously after the technical problems. Though they mostly recovered, they remained below $16 per share this afternoon.
To add insult to injury, the planned offering was on the low end of an IPO expected to be anywhere from $16 to $18 per share.
BATS exchanges trade roughly 11 percent of total daily U.S. equity volume, 25 percent of European equities daily volume and 3 percent of daily U.S. options volume.
