Prior to announcing its plans for an initial public offering (IPO) in April 2014, electronic trading firm Virtu Financial had maintained a low profile. Founded in 2008 just as the conventional investment bank dealers were melting down around it, the focus of the public and regulators was understandably elsewhere.
That changed with the publication of Michael Lewis’s book on high-frequency trading (HFT), Flash Boys, which coincided with the planned IPO. The public furore saw the comparatively esoteric subject debated on the floor of the US Congress, with the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Jo White, called to testify on whether regulators were responding robustly enough.