Thomas Kaegi, co-head of UBS Asset Management Apac, says: “We have seen growing investor appetite for tokenized financial assets across asset classes. Through leveraging our global capabilities and collaborating with peers and regulators, we can now provide clients with an innovative solution.” The bank’s global distributed ledger technology strategy is focused on using public and private blockchain networks for enhanced fund issuance and distribution. As an active industry partner of The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Guardian initiative, in October 2023 UBS Asset Management launched a live pilot of a tokenized Variable Capital Company (VCC) fund. More broadly, this fund launch also forms part of the broader expansion of UBS’s tokenization services through UBS Tokenize where in June 2023, UBS originated CNH 200 million of fully digital structured notes for a third-party issuer. And in November 2023, UBS completed the world’s first cross-border repurchase transaction with a natively-issued digital bond fully executed and settled on a public blockchain.