Geneva, January 24, 2023: Taurus SA (“Taurus”), the European leader in digital asset infrastructure for banks, and Cité Gestion SA (“Cité Gestion”), an independent Swiss private bank, are pleased to announce that Cité Gestion is the world’s first private bank to tokenize its share capital with the help of Taurus.
First private bank to tokenize its shares under Swiss law
Taurus and Cité Gestion are pleased to announce that Cité Gestion, an independent Swiss private bank established in Geneva, partnered with Taurus to issue its shares in the form of ledger-based securities – a process commonly referred to as “tokenization”. The tokenization of the shares was carried out pursuant to the standards established by the Capital Markets and Technology Association (CMTA), a Swiss not-for-profit organization based in Geneva, whose purpose is to promote the use of new technologies in traditional capital markets.
The tokenization process could be carried out in a couple of minutes using Taurus’ tokenization platform Taurus-CAPITAL. The tokens were created using the CMTAT, an open-source smart contract published by the CMTA and specifically dedicated to the tokenization of securities, and recorded on Ethereum, a public blockchain. Pending its full entry in the digital assets space, Cité Gestion also chose Taurus to manage the smart contract and perform asset servicing of its securities.
Lenz & Staehelin, the Swiss law firm, advised on the corporate and regulatory aspects of the transaction.
Christophe Utelli, Deputy CEO of Cité Gestion, highlights:
“At Cité Gestion, our vision is to make it possible for our clients to take full advantage of technological progress in the capital markets, and in particular of the huge potential of rationalization and efficiency gains that the distributed ledger technology offers in this field. It was important for our bank to be among the first to take advantage of the new possibilities offered by Swiss law for the digitalization of securities by tokenizing our own shares. As a robust, open-source and industry-supported framework, the CMTA standard was a natural choice for the tokenization. Taurus and the application of the CMTA standards ensure that an adequate risk management framework is at the heart of the process.”
2023 is the year of tokenization. Embracing the digitization of private assets and unlocking new benefits
Sebastien Dessimoz, co-founder and managing partner of Taurus mentions: “We are pleased to have been mandated by Cité Gestion to tokenize its shares. We have been involved in the tokenization of 15 companies last year covering a wide spectrum of securities. Close to half-of-them from institutional or regulated institutions. We believe 2023 will mark a step change in the industry and we are ready to support private companies to make the move.”
Taurus believes that digitization of private assets and securities is becoming the new standard in the digital asset industry. Consistent with its belief, Taurus has developed a full technology stack to support its clients; mainly a tokenization platform, digital asset custody, digital asset nodes completed by a FINMA license to trade tokenized securities. To this day, Taurus has been involved in the tokenization of 15 companies covering equity, private debt, structured products from Swiss and European firms.
About Cité Gestion
Cité Gestion is an independent Swiss private bank founded in 2009 providing the best of both worlds: the safety of a Swiss bank with the independence of an external asset manager / family office.
Its core values are entrepreneurship, an open architecture and the lack of conflict of interest between the bank and clients. Cité Gestion focuses on providing its clients with highly customized wealth management services.
About Taurus
Taurus SA is a Swiss company, founded in April 2018, that provides enterprise-grade digital asset infrastructure to issue, custody and trade any digital assets: cryptocurrencies including staking, tokenized assets and digital currencies. With more than 60% market share in Switzerland, it is also the European leader in the banking segment, entrusted by the full spectrum of financial institutions: systemic banks, universal banks, online banks, crypto-banks, private banks, and broker-dealers. Taurus also operates a regulated marketplace for private assets and tokenized securities. For further information on Taurus: please visit https://www.taurushq.com
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