Donald Bollerman, IEX Group Inc.’s head of markets and sales, resigned from the dark pool operator that is seeking approval to become a stock exchange.
Bollerman’s last day was Friday, the company said. He was one of the nine co-founders of IEX, which has operated a private trading venue since 2013.
"I’m proud of what the team at IEX has accomplished and I have full confidence in their ability to continue to disrupt as an exchange," Bollerman said in a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg News. "I have been helping to build markets for over 22 years, my goal was to help build IEX, and now it’s time to do something different."
Bollerman didn’t say what he was planning to do next. Before joining IEX, Bollerman was a managing director of Nasdaq Inc.’s transaction services group. His career in electronic trading began more than two decades ago at Instinet LLC, where he worked as an intern sweeping floors and unpacking equipment in a data center.
If IEX wins approval as a stock exchange, it would compete with markets including the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Inc. IEX imposes a fraction-of-a-second "speed bump" on orders, a feature it says makes trading fairer for all participants in its market.
"We are fully supportive of Don and wish him the best,” Ronan Ryan, co-founder and chief strategy officer of IEX, said in an e-mailed statement. “He will always be a member of the IEX family and we thank him for his contributions in helping launch our market."
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is due to decide on IEX’s application for exchange status by June 18.
To contact the reporter on this story: Annie Massa in New York at amassa12@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rob Urban at robprag@bloomberg.net, Jeffrey D Grocott
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