Pioneering Deal12 Aug 2022 10:31
12 August 2022
abrdn takes stake in digital exchange
abrdn has concluded a deal to become the largest external shareholder in Archax, the UK’s first regulated digital
securities exchange.
Archax has been set up to provide access for institutional investors to blockchain-based digital assets, acting as a
bridge to traditional capital markets.
Established four years ago, Archax is the first and only digital securities exchange that has won approval from the
FCA with permissions covering trading, custody and brokerage. The exchange will launch later this year.
abrdn CEO Stephen Bird said;
“Blockchain technologies are inevitably going to form a big part of the future of financial markets. There is the
potential to offer greater transparency, greater speed and less trading friction by using these nascent digital
technologies.
“Archax is one of the most promising UK players in this next expected high growth area in finance - the use of
digital and tokenized securities with same-day settlement. In that sense, the growth of the digital investment
market is about much more than cryptocurrencies.
“With Archax, we will have a meaningful footprint in this fast-developing market – which is likely to evolve in a
multitude of different ways that are relevant to our core businesses. This investment not only provides an
opportunity for substantial financial benefits, it also creates a partnership with some of the leading thinkers in an
area that has the potential to play a substantial role in the future of finance.”
Working with Archax, abrdn aims to use the venue as a route through which investors can access new
investment opportunities through digital securities, connect to existing offerings in a new way through
tokenisation and facilitate a shift towards greater operating efficiencies through the adoption of new
technologies like blockchain.
Archax has been designed specifically for institutional investors to trade in all types of digital assets, from cryptocurrencies
to digital securities. It is built using existing, proven, resilient, scalable, high-performance exchange infrastructure, hosted in
top-tier datacentre space, and integrated into the existing institutional trading workflow
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Big-name money managers are stampeding into digital assets, finding new ways to monetise investor interest even as trading volumes and prices for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have slumped.
FTSE 100-listed Abrdn this week became the latest investment house to take the plunge, by buying a s
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