The Commonwealth Bank of Australia announced today that the two-year ‘bond-i’ bond, which is based on blockchain-style distributed ledger technology, had raised A$110 million for CBA’s client, the World Bank.
The World Bank says it is the first bond globally “to be created, allocated, transferred and managed using blockchain technology.”
The bond-i is based a platform developed by CBA’s Blockchain Centre of Excellence and infrastructure for the bond runs on Microsoft’s Azure cloud service.
“Since announcing the mandate, the interest we’ve received for bond-i has been overwhelming,” said CBA’s executive general manager of IB&M international, James Wall.
”It is clear the market is ready and open to the uptake of emerging technologies and sees the potential evolution of the capital markets. It has been a pleasure to work on such a ground-breaking transaction with a forward-thinking organisation like the World Bank.”
The bank said that the bond’s investors so far include CBA, First State Super, the NSW Treasury Corporation, Northern Trust, QBE, SAFA, and the Treasury Corporation of Victoria.
“I am delighted that this pioneer bond transaction using the distributed ledger technology, bond-i, was extremely well received by investors,” said World Bank treasurer Arunma Oteh.
“We are particularly impressed with the breath of interest from official institutions, fund managers, government institutions, and banks. We were no doubt successful in moving from concept to reality because these high-quality investors understood the value of leveraging technology for innovation in capital markets.”