Baker McKenzie Guides First Cross-Border Digital Bond Pilot

Baker McKenzie, with its teams in Singapore, Switzerland, and Japan, served as legal advisor to DBS Bank, UBS, and SBI Digital Asset Holdings in executing the world’s first cross-border repo and natively-issued digital bond on a public blockchain.

This groundbreaking transaction, part of Project Guardian by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, involved the issuance, repurchase, and redemption of digitally native Swiss-law securities using stablecoins and tokenized certificates of deposits. The pilot trade was presented at the Singapore Fintech Festival.

The initiative, comprising 15 international financial institutions and regulatory bodies, aims to explore applications in asset tokenization and DeFi while managing risks to financial stability. They include DBS, UBS and SBI as well as policymakers — the Financial Services Agency of Japan (FSA), the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK).

Stephanie Magnus (Singapore-based Financial Services Regulatory principal) and Yves Mauchle (Zurich-based Corporate Finance partner) led the cross-border Baker McKenzie team. From Zurich, there were also involved associates Bettina Klein and Sammy Guidoum.