Singapore Exchange and Government-owned investment firm Temasek are to establish a digital asset joint venture focused on capital markets workflows through smart contracts, ledger and tokenisation technologies.
The agreement builds on the 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.
SGX says the JV will look to partner with fixed income issuance platforms to connect to its post-trade and asset servicing infrastructure, providing issuers, arranger banks, lawyers, investors and paying agents with an issuance-to-settlement network for Asia bonds. Concurrently, the JV will focus on other existing and emerging asset classes that have seen growing market demand, including funds and sustainable finance.
Lee Beng Hong, senior managing director, head of fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC), SGX, says: “The early success in our digital bond issuance platform has paved the way for SGX to make a larger move into digital assets, and we are very excited to take our digital asset business to the next level in partnership with Temasek. Together, we will capitalise on digitalisation trends that continue to shape global capital markets, and advance the development of capital markets infrastructure in Asia.”