Switzerland’s SIX Digital Exchange (SDX), the world’s first fully regulated FMI digital asset exchange, and Aequitec, a digital share register and cap table company, will partner to enhance the funding process for private companies. This will enable the seamless issuance and custody of digital equity securities in SDX’s regulated CSD.
Growth companies tend to remain private for longer before moving into public markets. During this period, issuers need efficient access to capital while maintaining sufficient control over the investor base.
Raising new funds while private is a cumbersome process that distracts founders and entrepreneurs from executing their core business strategies. The collaboration will streamline this process for issuers and SDX members, providing full control and traceability on transfers of shares from funding to IPO. Aequitec’s SDX connection ensures that unlisted shares can be integrated into the financial cycle with ease.
By orchestrating the processes across all involved parties, SDX and Aequitec provide a permanent and immutable transaction record using DLT. This in turn will reduce errors and facilitate the automated updating of the share registry, while providing to the issuer full visibility of investors’ holdings.
“As a digital market infrastructure based on DLT-technology, this collaboration with Aequitec is another key milestone in creating a new ecosystem for the issuance, custody, and transfer of equity securities in private markets”, said David Hatton, Head of Product at SIX Digital Exchange.
“This unique partnership will bring high flexibility to the issuers since Aequitec’s share register can represent all forms of representation of shares,“ adds Christian Wilk, Chief Executive Officer at Aequitec AG.
About Aequitec
Founded in 2020 by Johannes Schneebacher, Dr. Christian Wilk, and Deon Digital AG, Aequitec helps stock and private companies to digitize their corporate governance processes. The Zurich-based startup supports its customers with a specially developed software platform. This offers the possibility to automate and digitally map corporate actions. This enables stock corporations, for instance, to hold their general meetings digitally or hybrid and to digitize their share register with a global connection to the banking financial system. The main shareholders are currently the founders and the start-up incubator F10.
