A host of big banks have joined Marketnode, a digital asset joint venture from Singapore Exchange and Temasek focused on capital markets workflows through smart contracts, ledger and tokenisation technologies.
Barclays, BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, Citi, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Orient Securities International, Standard Chartered, Societe Generale and UOB, have been lined up as early adopters of the programme, and will provide market input towards its product development, co-create DLT solutions and jointly explore product expansion beyond fixed income.
The post-trade and asset servicing infrastructure aims to provide issuers, arranger banks, lawyers, investors and paying agents with an issuance-to-settlement network for Asia bonds.
Slated to launch later this year, the project builds on a successful collaboration between SGX, Temasek and HSBC which culminated with the issuance of Asia’s first public syndicated digital bond for Olam International in August 2020. In all, SGX’s digital asset issuance, depository and servicing platform was used to issue four digital bonds by several issuers, with a total size of over S$1 billion.
In addition to its existing strategic collaboration with Covalent Capital, Marketnode will also be partnering with RootAnt Global, a Singapore-based fintech, and SETL, the UK-based blockchain platform to build out its fixed income and multi-asset end-to-end infrastructure.
Lee Beng Hong, head of fixed income, currencies and commodities SGX, says: “By collaborating with banking and technology partners, we are creating network effects and building scale and capability that can be applied cross-assets within a single platform, for the benefit of banks, issuers and investors. We welcome all market participants to join Marketnode in playing a role to accelerate the digital transformation of capital markets.”
He says the JV intends to begin work on other existing and emerging asset classes that have seen growing market demand, including funds and sustainable finance.