Today DekaBank announced it is the buyer of a €100m digital registered covered bond issued by Natixis Pfandbriefbank. The issuance was the first of its type in Germany and it used the SWIAT permissioned blockchain. Natixis Pfandbriefbank is an indirect subsidiary of Groupe BPCE, France’s fourth largest banking group.
DekaBank was also the registrar and paying agent.
DekaBank founded SWIAT with LBBW and Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures investing subsequently. SWIAT has been involved in several issuances as part of the ECB’s wholesale DLT settlement tests that attracted almost 60 institutions, but the latest bond was not part of the trials.
Earlier this month SWIAT was involved with another mortgage related bond. That was for a €100m covered digital bond issued by Berlin Hyp, an LBBW subsidiary. The Berlin Hyp bond was a bearer bond issued under Germany’s eWpG laws, whereas this one is a registered bond.
“Our vision is to transfer the traditional securities spectrum and current process world into the modern, digital, and blockchain-based world,” said Martin K. Müller, Executive Board Member of DekaBank. “By 2025, we aim to realise the first billion Euros in issuance volume on the SWIAT blockchain.”
Amongst institutional platforms, the SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) was the first to pass the billion mark for digital issuances earlier this year. Others are catching up. For example, HSBC’s Orion has not been involved in a large number of transactions, but one of them was a Hong Kong green bond issuance worth more than $750 million.
