Virtu Financial

In May 2011, Virtu merged with proprietary trading firm Madison Tyler, based in Santa Monica, California with the backing of Silver Lake Partners, a technology-focused private equity firm. Vincent Viola co-founded Madison Tyler with David Salomon, a former arbitrage trader at Goldman Sachs.

Virtu acquired a market-making unit that handles NYSE Amex stocks from Cohen Capital Group LLC in December 2011. The purchase made Virtu the largest overseer of trading in shares listed on Amex, known as the American Stock Exchange, before NYSE Euronext bought it for $260 million in 2008. The deal gave Virtu a designated market-maker license for New York Stock Exchange companies. With the acquisition, some of the companies Virtu was able to trade and support included New Gold Inc., Northern Oil & Gas Inc., and the American depositary receipts of British American Tobacco Plc.

In September 2012, Virtu acquired the exchange-traded fund (ETF) market maker assets of Nyenburgh Holding B.V., a high-frequency trader in European ETFs.

In April 2017, Virtu agreed to pay US$1.4 billion in cash to purchase rival market-making firm KCG Holdings. This acquisition was completed on July 20, 2017.

In November 2018, Virtu announced an approximately US$1 billion deal to acquire agency brokerage and financial markets technology firm Investment Technology Group. This acquisition was completed on March 1, 2019.

In November 2021, Virtu launched a new electronic swaptions workflow on its RFQ hub.

In May 2022, Virtu ITG Europe joined the SIX Swiss Exchange. Later, in June 2022, Virtu began collaborating with other financial firms, including Citadel Securities, Charles Schwab Corporation, Sequoia Capital, and Paradigm, as well as unnamed retail brokerages, to develop a cryptocurrency trading platform focused toward retail brokerages.

In December 2024, Bloomberg reported that Virtu was among multiple financial companies joining Global Futures and Options Ltd. (GFO-X), a London-based crypto derivatives platform.

Investigations

In April 2014, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent Virtu a letter seeking information on its HFT practices, asking about special arrangements with dark pools and exchanges, the company's trading strategies and whether Virtu practices latency arbitrage, a high-frequency activity.

In July 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sought information on ten HFT firms with broker-dealer licenses, including Virtu Financial, as part of an ongoing investigation into predatory trading strategies. The SEC's probe focuses on abuse of order types and abusive trading like layering or spoofing, a tactic intended to trick investors into buying or selling a stock at unfavorable prices. A settlement was announced in 2017.

John McCrank of Reuters noted that scrutiny around high-frequency trading intensified after the release of Michael Lewis's best-selling book Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt in March 2014.

In November 2022, Virtu sued the SEC, claiming that it did not respond to a public records request. The company submitted a Freedom of Information Act request earlier in June, seeking to review the SEC's measures to meet legal requirements in evaluating potential investor harm and market risks.

The company was investigated by the SEC in 2023 for failing to protect sensitive customer data. The SEC claimed that between January 2018 and April 2019 Virtu broker-dealer employees had access to customers' names, and the names, prices and volumes of securities that customers bought and sold. Virtu settled the matter in December 2025, agreeing to pay a $2.5 million fine while not admitting or denying any wrongdoing.