The company gets $50 million to apply a distributed ledger to financial services and expands its Board of Directors.
Digital Asset Holdings has unveiled $50 million in funding that it has managed to raise from a wide variety of world’s leading companies. This list of investors includes ABN AMRO, Accenture, ASX Limited, BNP Paribas, Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., Citi, CME Ventures, Deutsche Börse Group, ICAP, J.P. Morgan, Santander InnoVentures, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.
At the end of 2015 Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Citigroup declined to provide financing when it was found out that JPMorgan aims at becoming the chief investor. It promised Digital Asset $7.5 million.
Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset, underlines the importance of recent funding: “These investments represent a tremendous endorsement of Digital Asset from banks, exchanges, settlement and clearing firms, central securities depositories, and market infrastructure and professional services providers. Our strategic investors have come together from across the financial services industry to help drive global adoption of transformative solutions which enhance the vital services that they provide.”
Chief investors also didn’t stay on the sidelines. Mr. Viswanathan from J.P. Morgan said: “We are proud to be a lead investor in this round of financing. Distributed Ledger Technology has the potential to transform the way our industry does business, and we believe Digital Asset has the right talent and technology to make it a reality.”
Digital Asset also announced the expansion of its Board of Directors. Now it will consist of nine members including Catherine Flax, Head of Commodity Derivatives and Foreign Exchange & Local Markets, Americas of BNP Paribas, Ashwin Kumar, Group Head of Product Development of Deutsche Börse Group, Sanoke Viswanathan, Chief Administrative Officer of J.P. Morgan’s Corporate & Investment Bank, and Mike Bodson, President & Chief Executive Officer of DTCC, who will join Blythe Masters, Donald Wilson, Sunil Hirani, Cristóbal Conde and an additional director who will be named shortly.
It hasn’t been long since Digital Asset Holdings unveiled its plans to expand into the European market. The company is going to open a new office in London. “London is a global center for finance and a leading hub for innovation. Opening an office in the UK is a natural extension of our commitment to wholesales financial markets around the world,” Blythe Masters said in an official statement.
Digital Asset was launched in 2015 as a blockchain technology company that offers settlement and ledger services for financial assets. Company’s mission is to improve efficiency, security, compliance and settlement speed while reducing costs through the implementation of Distributed Ledger Technology. Digital Asset’s team believes that the software, developed by them, can considerably facilitate the trading process and make post-trade processing efficient and secure.
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