The Gibraltar Stock Exchange (GSX) is set to become among the world’s first stock exchanges to offer the listing services of digital debt securities and digital funds. The GSX announced on April 9, 2019 that it would begin listing of these new products, known as ‘digital’, ‘smart’ or ‘tokenised’ securities, such as Corporate Bonds, Convertible Bonds, Asset Backed Securities, Derivative Securities, Open-Ended Funds, Closed-Ended Funds, utilizing Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), under its current licensing permissions, on the GSX Global Market.
GSX operates two markets, the Main Market and the Global Market. The Main Market is the Gibraltar Stock Exchange’s EU regulated market as defined in the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). Issuers (except for Open-Ended Collective Investment Schemes) must publish a prospectus in accordance with the Prospectus Directive. The Global Market is the Gibraltar Stock Exchange’s self-regulated market. It is a Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF) as defined in the MiFID. The Global Market has a lighter reporting and disclosure framework.
According to the announcement, “the GSX, applying DLT, will be able to open up greater liquidity pools, making illiquid assets more accessible, and set the foundations to democratize the capital markets, that have gone largely unchanged in technology for decade.” Nick Cowan, CEO of the GSX Group, commented on the announcement, stating:
This is a historic moment for GSX, we have worked incredibly hard to reach this point, and we are now at the precipice of a truly transformational period for the capital markets. We now have an unparalleled opportunity for the GSX to become a frontrunner in the emerging digital securities market. We’re pioneering meaningful change, for the betterment of the global financial industry, we have come so far already, and this is only just the beginning.
