The UnionBank of the Philippines Raises $209M in the Country’s First Blockchain-based Peso Bond Offering
June 2, 2022The UnionBank of the Philippines raised P11 billion ($209 million) from investors in the country’s first blockchain-based peso bonds.
Local media reported that UnionBank’s digital bonds were issued through the Philippine Depository & Trust Corp.’s digital registration and digital depository. The bonds were kept interoperable with the fixed income market of the Philippine Dealing & Exchange Corp.
STACS, a Singapore-based fintech firm, was chosen to supply the blockchain-based digital securities trading infrastructure required to support the offering.
The oversubscription was 11 times higher than the bank had expected when it announced its goal to raise at least 1 billion pesos in its digital peso bond offering in May.
The money will be used to help finance the publicly traded bank’s acquisition of global banking behemoth Citi’s domestic consumer banking unit.
According to the reports, UnionBank treasurer and head of global markets, Jose Emmanuel Hilado, described the issuance as a “building brick” in the bank’s path to embrace digitization and industry change.
The bank chose IBM and Swiss crypto custodian Metaco to protect digital assets on its balance sheet. In February 2018, the crypto-friendly bank also joined a consortium of other local banks to use Visa’s blockchain-based payment technology.
The bonds have a tenor of 1.5 years and a fixed rate of 3.25% per year. They are traded on the Philippine Dealing & Exchange Corp marketplace.
