The London Stock Exchange has launched a blockchain-based Digital Markets Infrastructure (DMI) platform for private funds and facilitated its first transaction.
DMI, which is powered by Microsoft Azure, has been developed to deliver blockchain-based scale and efficiencies for the full asset lifecycle - from issuance, tokenisation and distribution to post trade asset settlement and servicing, across multiple asset classes.
Private funds is the first asset class to utilise the DMI platform, with expansion to additional asset classes planned.
As part of the initial offering, private funds admitted to DMI will be discoverable by users of LSEG's Workspace platform as part of their day-to-day workflow, enabling General Partners to interact at scale with professional investors to discover, analyse, and access new private market investment opportunities that were previously hard to reach.
MembersCap and Archax have been onboarded as the first clients to the platform and the first transaction has been facilitated with MembersCap, as the General Partner of MCM Fund 1, successfully executing a primary fundraise with Archax acting as nominee for a major web-3 foundation. EJF Capital has also been onboarded as an early adopter and a selection of their funds will be available on the platform soon.
Darko Hajdukovic, head of digital markets infrastructure, LSEG, comments: “The onboarding of our first clients and this first transaction are significant milestones, demonstrating the appetite for an end-to-end, interoperable, regulated financial markets DLT infrastructure. LSEG’s position as a convener of markets can bring significant scale to digital assets and effect real change.”