International law firm Clifford Chance advised ABN AMRO in relation to Vesteda’s inaugural digital green bond on Polygon’s public blockchain. Vesteda is a leading Dutch residential investment fund, which invests the pension and insurance premiums of institutional investors, such as pension funds and insurance firms, in sustainable Dutch residential properties.

This transaction is the first of its kind in the Netherlands. What makes this transaction innovative is that the bonds have been registered in a record on the public Polygon blockchain protocol, an existing permissionless distributed ledger using distributed ledger technology (DLT). This also means that the investors’ ownership of the digital green bonds is recorded on the Polygon blockchain. To ensure custody and security of the investors’ unique keys, ABN AMRO uses a wallet for accessing the digital green bond.

Vesteda will apply an amount equivalent to the net proceeds from the digital green bonds in accordance with the Vesteda Green Finance Framework.

Clifford Chance advised ABN AMRO on all aspects of the digital green bonds offering and looks forward to using the expertise and knowledge of its market-leading Debt Capital Markets practice to further expand the digital bonds market. Clifford Chance’s capital markets team advising ABN AMRO was led by Dewi Walian and furthermore consisted of Jurgen van der Meer and Marina Sarkisjan.