The story
Getco LLC was founded in 1999 by Stephen Schuler and Daniel Tierney, former floor traders in Chicago, and had 400 employees at the time of the merger. The firm's primary business was electronic market making/high-frequency trading, though it also provided execution algorithms and a dark pool through its client services arm, Getco Execution Services.
Knight Capital Group was founded in 1995 as Knight/Trimark Group and had about 1400 employees at the time of the merger. Its largest business was market-making in US equities for retail brokerages, though it also provided other services such as electronic execution, dark pools, plus institutional sales and trading. In August 2012, a technological/managerial breakdown subsequently dubbed the "Knightmare" caused Knight to lose $460m in the course of one trading day, nearly putting the firm out of business. In December 2012, it agreed to be acquired by Getco LLC. The merger was approved by the respective stockholders and unitholders of both companies on June 25, 2013.
On July 8, 2013, chief executive officer Daniel Coleman rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, marking the completion of Knight and Getco's merger and the unveiling of a new corporate identity, KCG Holdings.
In 2014, 27 million shares of Platinum Studios were acquired by KCG Holdings.
In January 2015, KCG Holdings announced it would be selling its foreign exchange trading platform KCG Hotspot to BATS Global Markets for $365 million.
In April 2017, Virtu Financial announced that it would purchase KCG Holdings for US$1.4 billion in cash. The acquisition closed on July 20, 2017.
From Wikipedia’s article on KCG Holdings, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7