Berner Kantonalbank (BEKB), SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) and digital share platform daura are partnering to enable SMEs to issue their shares digitally in a regulated, intermediated form.

BEKB will provide their secondary liquidity SMEx platform, daura will provide its digital share registry and digital annual general meeting solutions, while SDX will provide its digital asset issuance infrastructure.

The digital shares will be issued in the form of uncertificated securities or distributed ledger technology (DLT) securities in accordance with Swiss regulations and made available for regulated bank custody.

daura will be the first user of this model when it issues private participation certificates through BEKB’s platform. These shares will then be registered on the SDX CSD.

While this is a new collaboration between BEKB and SDX, daura has been providing SDX with DLT-based share registry services and tokenisation since April 2022. SDX’s parent company SIX acquired a stake in daura in late 2019.

“As the world’s first fully regulated and fully integrated digital securities platform offering issuance, listing, trading, settlement, servicing, and custody of digital securities, SDX is very excited to welcome Berner Kantonalbank as a new member on our CSD,”

said David Newns, Head of SDX.

“For BEKB, this partnership is the next stage in the expansion of its SME|X secondary market, which will consequently become accessible to other players outside the current ecosystem in the near future,”

said Armin Brun, CEO of BEKB.

Featured image credit: edited from Unsplash