Tokenization brings automation and real-time reporting capabilities to corporate treasury's back office relationship.
The industry is spending billions to ensure tokenization establishes a toehold in one of corporate treasury’s most back-office relationships— the one with its transfer agents.
Transfer agents do not have the highest profile in corporate finance, but serve a critical role of maintaining the record of who owns a company’s stock, facilitating stock transfers between buyers and sellers, and handling stock-related issues involving dividend payments, stock splits, and mergers.
It surprised the industry when technology investment group Bullish, which provides digital asset market infrastructure and information services, agreed to purchase UK-based Equiniti, one of the largest global transfer agents by market share, in a $4.2 billion stock-and-debt deal expected to close in January 2027.
An Industry Tipping Point
“Tokenization is a once-in-a-generation shift in how capital markets operate, the defining infrastructure trend of the next 25 years,” said Tom Farley, CEO of Bullish, in a prepared statement. “Broad adoption at institutional scale requires three things: end-to-end tokenization services, a single, unified ledger, and a broad base of blue-chip issuer relationships, at scale. This combination delivers all three, and I believe it uniquely positions us to lead the transition to tokenized securities.”
Bullish is purchasing Equinti from private equity firm Siris Capital Group, which took the publicly traded transfer agent private in a reported $949 million deal in May 2021.
“This outcome reflects our strategy of backing tech-enabled services businesses at the center of market transformation, and we are confident that Bullish is exceptionally well-positioned to build on Equiniti’s strength in an evolving capital markets ecosystem,” said Frank Baker, co-founder and managing partner of Siris, in the same statement.
According to Bullish officials, the combined platform will work alongside existing market infrastructure, including central securities depositories such as DTCC, Euroclear, and Clearstream, as well as custodian banks and broker-dealers, to support the full tokenized asset lifecycle.
New Relationships, New Capabilities
Among the expected benefits from the acquisition will be enabling real-time capitalization tables listing a company’s ownership structure, shareholders with their ownership percentages, and the type and amount of issued securities; instant 24/7 transaction support for investors; and automated corporate actions processing.
A week before Bullish-Equiniti news became public, Australian transfer agent and largest by market share, Computershare, announced a partnership with digital securities platform provider Securitize that will let issuers offer issuer-sponsored tokens (ISTs) alongside their existing shares, including those held electronically by the DTCC subsidiary Depository Trust Company.
“We designed ISTs to operate within the existing regulatory environment, maintaining the independence and oversight that issuers and regulators expect from a transfer agent and allowing for effective interoperability with market infrastructure,” said Ann Bowering, CEO, Issuer Services, Computershare North America, at the time.
More recently, the DTC released an update on its plans to start a three-year tokenization pilot for highly liquid securities, including components of the Russell 1000 Index, exchange-traded funds that track other major U.S. indices, and various Treasuries, in its custody.
