BATS IPO Canceled in Share Crash

Updated with commentary from the Securities and Exchange Commission and BATS

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Trading glitches at the high-speed electronic exchange BATS Global Markets (BATS) forced the withdrawal of the company's IPO Friday along with a dramatic, brief halt in Apple's (AAPL) shares.

The blowup could revive inquiries into high-speed trading almost two years after a "Flash Crash" roiled global stock markets.

"You would have thought this would be BATS' greatest day in their history; it's ended up to be a nightmare," says Scott Sweet, senior managing director at IPO Boutique.

A BATS spokesperson said that the company currently has no new IPO plans.

The company's failed listing on its own exchange also casts doubt over the ability for private exchanges to handle share offerings.

"Their aspiration of getting into IPOs has certainly taken a very hard knock," Sweet said.

According to Bloomberg data, the high-frequency trading venue's shares opened at $15.25, but subsequently fell to just 3.8 cents in early trading and were halted.

Those trades have since been canceled. BATS Global Markets also said that "system issues" impacting the stock trading of companies like Apple trading on its exchanges under ticker symbols between A and BF have been resolved.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said that it is looking into the trading issues at BATS on Friday.

"As is our practice, SEC staff has been and will continue to be in discussions with BATS to determine the cause and extent of the incident and steps BATS is taking to remedy the situation," said SEC spokesman John Nester.

The Lenexa, Kan.- based company priced an initial public offering of 6.3 million shares for $16 late on Thursday and shares were set to open on the company's own BZX Exchange under the ticker "BATS." After shares opened on the company's exchange at $15.25, the company's shares fell precipitously to just a few pennies, Bloomberg data shows.

At 3:42 p.m. ET, BATS said that as a result of trading issues, the company was withdrawing its IPO filing, which was to raise roughly $100 million.

"Although our affected market has reopened, in the wake of today's technical issues, which affected the trading of certain stocks, including that of BATS, we believe withdrawing the IPO is the appropriate action to take for our Company and our shareholders," said BATS Chief Executive Joe Ratterman in a statement.

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