Created Date:
18 June 2024
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Carey Olsen and Ctrl Alt facilitate the first tokenisation of capital in Guernsey for institutional investors

Ctrl Alt has partnered with a UK Bank, carrying out the first successful tokenisation of capital that has enabled institutional investors to access investment in a Debt Transaction. The structuring was enabled with the support from the leading offshore law firm, Carey Olsen, making it the first tokenisation of its kind within the Guernsey framework.

This milestone underscores the increasing demand from financial institutions for tokenisation solutions. Notably, most recently, BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, unveiled its tokenised money market fund[1], emphasising the institution’s trajectory towards innovation aided by tokenisation.

The burgeoning opportunity in this space shows no signs of slowing, further highlighted by projections from the Boston Consulting Group estimating a $16 trillion business potential in tokenising global illiquid assets by 2030[2].

As a tokenisation solutions provider, Ctrl Alt has seen first-hand the increasing demand from financial institutions looking to utilise its capabilities. The demand for Ctrl Alt is largely thanks to their product solutions and financial engineering expertise that seamlessly enable the tokenisation of assets within the parameters of traditional financial structuring. This enables businesses to benefit from tokenisation with legal ownership certainty.

CEO and Founder, Matt Ong comments further on the rising interest: "There’s no doubt that tokenisation will continue to play an important role in financial services. At Ctrl Alt, we’re seeing an increase in institutions looking to utilise the benefits of tokenisation across various sectors of their business.

We’re pleased to have created a suite of product solutions that offer institutions diverse ways to engage with tokenisation in a regulatory-compliant framework with ease. Our recent tokenisation for a UK Bank with the help of structuring via Guernsey with Carey Olsen showed the increasing use case for tokenisation within financial institutions."

As Ong mentions, the tokenisation for this UK Bank was made possible by Ctrl Alt solutions combined with a Guernsey structure making it the first of its kind.

Carey Olsen partner Matt Brehaut explains the benefits of a Guernsey framework to support this: "We are delighted to have helped Ctrl Alt with establishing their Guernsey structure – the island of Guernsey's first tokenisation. This bears out our view that Guernsey is ideally placed to benefit from the tokenisation revolution, owing to the flexibility of our Companies Law, a pragmatic and forward-looking regulator, our electronic transactions law that ensures the tokens' enforceability, and the exemption in our Lending, Credit, and Finance Law (which confirms that tokens are not "virtual assets" and are regulated instead as ordinary securities)."

Carey Olsen Guernsey managing partner Tom Carey adds: "Ctrl Alt's market-leading work on this first structuring looks set to pave the way for tokenisation to become mainstream very soon, which is great news for Guernsey. We hope to see it become the jurisdiction of choice for tokenised structures."

Both Ong and Carey show that the benefits of tokenisation to support the financial services industry cannot be ignored. It continues to play a pivotal role in asset structuring and customer offerings.