A Paris-based consortium of top-rank financial firms are to pool resources in the establishment of a joint venture company that plans to use distributed ledger technology to ease the post-trade processing of SME lending operations.
Liquidshare has been created by BNP Paribas, CACEIS, Caisse des Dépôts, Euroclear, Euronext, S2iEM and Société Générale with the support of Paris Europlace.
The new venture will be housed at an incubator in Paris and will be led by Detusche Bank veteran Thibaud de Maintenant as CEO. The chair is filled by Euronext board member Anthony Attia.
Thibaud says distributed ledger technology has the potential to dramatically simplify the chain of post-trade operations, guaranteeing and facilitating the consolidation of securities registers, and enabling a higher speed of execution with real-time settlement at T+0.
By combining their money and expertise, the partners hope to harness the technology to improve SMEs' access to capital markets, reducing transaction costs and making raising funds easier.
“With the launch of LiquidShare, we will use the great potential of the blockchain technology to become a key player in the post-trade industry," he says. "Supported by shareholders across the European financial market ecosystem, this initiative is the first of its kind.”