DEAL - BANK - BLOCKCHAIN

Luxembourg, December 2022 – We have assisted Goldman Sachs in relation to Luxembourg law aspects of its new, cutting-edge Distributed Ledger Technology platform GS DAP™. The platform is built on private permissioned blockchain technology augmented by a smart contract application layer and will be used to facilitate the issuance, registration, settlement and custody of digital assets, including but not limited to digital bonds.

This innovative platform has been inaugurated hosting the issuance of a 100 million euro denominated digital bond by the European Investment Bank.

The bond is governed by Luxembourg law and is leveraging the possibilities of Luxembourg blockchain legislation, and in particular the law of 6 April 2013 on dematerialised securities. Other innovative features are the involvement of the Luxembourg and French Central Banks providing a tokenised representation of euro central bank money enabling settlement on the same day as the issuance, the use of smart contracts and on-chain subscription.

Marc Mouton, partner in the Banking & Financial Services practice of Arendt & Medernach has led on Luxembourg law aspects. A multi-jurisdictional Ashurst team led by Etay Katz and Sidika Ulker have covered English, German and French law aspects of the development and launch of the new platform.

Commenting, Marc Mouton said: “We are very pleased and honoured to have advised Goldman Sachs on the Luxembourg aspects of setting up an exciting new DLT platform which gives an outlook on the future of capital market transactions. The fact that the first transaction hosted on the platform is governed by Luxembourg law is a significant illustration of the success of the innovative and robust Luxembourg DLT legislation.”

For its innovative aspects, this deal received a Digital finance award from IFLR in May 2023. Learn more here_

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