The European Investment Bank (EIB) issued its sixth digital bond, a €100 million ($105.5mn) fixed-rate note due 22 November 2029. This marks the second EIB issuance in the context of the Eurosystem exploratory work on new technologies for wholesale central bank money settlement (ECB trials) and comes just one week after the launch of the first bond.
Similarly to the previous transaction, this bond adopts the exploratory cash tokens issued on the Cash DL3S platform by Banque de France, which interoperates in real time with GS DAP, the digital bond issuance and tokenization platform provided by Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE. The Banque Central du Luxembourg acted as the local central bank for the EIB. Joint lead managers of the transaction are Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE, DZ Bank, and LBBW.
Cyril Rousseau, director general of Finance at EIB, said in a statement: “Building on the success of the recent pilot transaction in cooperation with the Eurosystem, on this occasion we are again working with Banque de France’s DL3S platform and now involving the Goldman Sachs’ GS DAP platform. This iteration diversifies the testing of market issuance platforms, counterparties and custodial solutions, opening up new opportunities for institutional investors to access and test innovative financial solutions.”
Emmanuelle Assouan, director general Financial Stability and Operations at Banque de France, said in a statement: “By using Banque de France’s DLT platform DL3S for managing this new tokenized issuance, EIB, Goldman Sachs and Bank of New York demonstrated the importance of tokenized central bank money in the overall process. It allowed our partners to use it for the deployment of their brand-new custodial model with final investors.”
Mathew McDermott, global head of Digital Assets at Goldman Sachs, said in a statement: “Our approach with this latest transaction was to provide investors with more direct access and to establish a structure well-positioned to support investors’ future activities for digital bonds, such as financings or collateral mobility use cases.”
Caroline Butler, head of the Digital Assets Business at BNY, said in a statement: “We are proud to collaborate with the EIB and Goldman Sachs on the development of future-focused market infrastructure through our roles as custodian, paying agent, and investor in this transaction. Today’s announcement marks another step toward collectively executing on our industry’s vision of supporting the end-to-end asset lifecycle on distributed ledger technology.”