Competition in stock exchanges coming.
It's been known for some time that dark pool IEX, which was prominently featured in Michael Lewis' "Flash Boys" book, aims to become a stock exchange later this year. It will be known as Investors' Exchange.
Late last night Patrick Healy announced that he would be joining IEX. Healy ran Issuer Advisory Group, which advised companies on where they should be listing and also acted as a general advocate for those companies.
Healy didn't say what he will be doing, but it's pretty clear that Investors' Exchange is bringing in Healy to get new listings for the nascent exchange.
Despite the weak equities business, NYSE/ICE still gets a significant portion of its revenues from listings (about 12 percent), so this is a sign that Investors' Exchange is going to be going after the listings business of both NYSE and Nasdaq.
Separately, BATS Global Markets, the third exchange, this week hired Laura Morrison, who until last week was the NYSE's head of ETFs.
New BATS CEO Chris Concannon has made no secret that he wants to beef up his ETF trading business (several ETFs already list on BATS), and this is a sign he is very serious about increasing the already substantial trading of ETFs on BATS.
Competition is alive and well in the equity space!