A&O advises Santander on the first end-to-end blockchain bond issue

The Santander Senior dBond Nº1 has a nominal amount of USD20 million, pays a quarterly fixed coupon and is due in September 2020, and will not be subject to secondary trading. It is represented on and fully paid and settled on the public Ethereum blockchain, registered in a permissioned manner.

For this real money pilot transaction, Santander received support from London based startup Nivaura, a regulated fintech company which builds innovative solutions that digitize and automate key processes in capital markets. Nivaura was the first company invited to join A&O’s tech innovation space “Fuse” in 2017.

Partner Salvador Ruiz Bachs said: "This is a significant deal for Santander and demonstrates the viability of a platform which has the potential to be more efficient and open the market to more players."

Partner Charles Poole-Warren added: "It is positive to see technology being used in this way: we are proud to have been able to support Santander on this issuance and look forward to working on further blockchain bond issuances."

Commenting on the use of Nivaura's support on the issuance, partner Daniel Fletcher said: "We have been working closely with Nivaura for a number of years to explore how best to harness existing and emerging technologies to facilitate bond issue processes for the benefit of our clients. Santander’s inaugural blockchain bond is an excellent example of this work starting to come to fruition."