From Australia Financial Review:
The ASX is facing competition for clearing and settling equities, with blockchain start-up SETL pledging to build a post-trading system cheaper and to deploy it quicker than the replacement for the existing CHESS infrastructure, which is being developed by the ASX itself and US group Digital Asset Holdings.
London-based SETL is raising capital from some Australian brokers and has retained local lawyers to prepare regulatory applications to approve its system.
The move comes as the federal government considers whether to remove the ASX’s monopoly over equities settlement and clearing – the vital “pipes” that underpin the operation of Australia’s equity markets – later this year, if regulators can devise a framework allowing competition.
“We are very committed to the Australian market,” said SETL founder Peter Randall, who also founded Chi-X, which took on the traditional equity exchanges in Europe and competes with ASX in equities trading. He said SETL wants to do in post-trading systems what Chi-X did in trading.
The full article is available at http://www.afr.com/markets/equity-markets/setl-wants-to-settle-and-clear-equities-in-competition-with-asx-20170313-guwr5k