HM Treasury announced that HSBC’s Orion platform will host the UK government’s first issuance of a digital bond, DIGIT, with Ashurst providing legal support. The short-dated digital securities will be issued outside of the government’s main debt program directly onto the Orion distributed ledger. A key goal is to support the adoption of DLT in the UK.
Given the requirement that the winner was a participant in the UK’s Digital Securities Sandbox, there would only have been a few eligible candidates, and only two with significant digital bond experience – Euroclear and HSBC. The UK bank has been involved in the largest digital bond issuance to date, the HK$ 10 billion ($1.29 billion) offering by the Hong Kong government. Ashurst served as HSBC’s adviser for that transaction.
“We want to attract investment and make the UK the best place to do business, which is why we are launching DIGIT to understand how the UK can capitalise on this technology, deliver efficiencies and reduce costs for firms,” said Lucy Rigby KC MP, Economic Secretary to the Treasury.
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