Today the International Capital Market Association (ICMA) published a reference guide for DLT based digital debt, or digital bonds. While it describes it as 50 practical questions, the figure is closer to three times that. Despite that, for those familiar with the topic it’s a quick read and provides an excellent planning and execution guide.
The document is the product of ICMA’s DLT Bonds Working group, which is chaired by Union Investment’s Christoph Hock.
“The token economy, and DLT-based bonds in particular, have become increasingly more relevant in recent months,” said Mr Hock, alluding to the recent Eurosystem wholesale DLT settlement trials in central bank money which helped to ramp up activity.
He continued, “Where currently we see a high degree of fragmentation across the value chain, we look forward to greater collaboration and standardisation, which will play a key role in further building the token universe. With its DLT Bonds Reference Guide, ICMA and all involved parties have made a great step in this direction.”
As an asset manager, Union Investment has been one of the most prolific investors in digital bonds, starting with the European Investment Bank’s (EIB) inaugural bond back in April 2021. The EIB has now issued six digital bonds, including two in November as part of the ECB DLT settlement trials.
The guide is a little biased towards Europe, but that’s where the vast majority of issuances have taken place, particularly in Germany and Switzerland. For Europe, Luxembourg is the legal jurisdiction of choice. There have been hardly any issuances in North America, partly the result of custody issues with the SEC’s SAB 121.
In February Hong Kong issued a multi currency bond of more than $750 million, the largest DLT bond to date. However, Germany’s KfW has issued two larger digital bonds totalling €8 billion on Clearstream’s D7 platform. Technically, as they used a CSD, under German law the KfW bonds are not ‘crypto’ bonds. That’s despite D7 using Digital Asset’s Canton infrastructure. These sorts of questions are included in the reference guide.
ICMA also collaborated with the Monetary Authority of Singapore on the Guardian Fixed Income Framework published last month.
