GTS Closes Acquisition of Barclays Equity Options Market Making Business

Already the Biggest Market Maker at the NYSE and Largest Wholesale Market Maker of OTC Securities – Acquisition Furthers GTS’s Vision for Being Trading Partner of Choice

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GTS, a leading electronic market maker across global financial instruments, today announced the completion of its acquisition of Barclays’ equities automated options trading unit.

As part of the transaction, approximately 40 Barclays personnel became full-time GTS employees. The unit is an options market maker quoting in more than 735,000 individual securities across 13 global options exchanges. These comprise the options of 2,000 publicly listed companies, with a specialist appointment in 725 of them. In total, the business trades approximately two percent of all exchange traded equity options volume in the United States.

Ari Rubenstein, co-founder and CEO of GTS, said, “The data-driven, pricing precision of GTS is more important than ever in today’s unpredictable and highly volatile market environment. As has been reinforced during the current crisis, superior trading technology is essential to market participants and the overall functioning of our capital markets.”

The new GTS options trading business is led by Kirill Gelman, who had overseen it at Barclays since 2008.

Since 2016, GTS has been the largest Designated Market Maker (DMM) at the New York Stock Exchange, responsible for the trading of almost 1,000 public companies that have a total market capitalization of approximately $10 trillion dollars. Listed securities include blue chip companies ranging from ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) and Ford (NYSE: F) to international companies such as Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) to leading global technology companies like Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), AT&T (NYSE: T) and Pinterest (NYSE: PINS).

Rosenblatt Securities advised GTS on the Barclays transaction.

About GTS

GTS is a global electronic market maker, powered by combining market expertise with innovative, proprietary technology. As a quantitative trading firm continually building for the future, GTS leverages the latest in artificial intelligence systems and sophisticated pricing models to bring consistency, efficiency, and transparency to today’s financial markets. GTS accounts for 3-5% of daily cash equities volume in the U.S. and trades over 30,000 different instruments globally. GTS is the largest Designated Market Maker (DMM) at the New York Stock Exchange, responsible for nearly $13 trillion of market capitalization.

For more information on GTS, please visit www.gtsx.com.