Linklaters advises Bank of Communications on its inaugural digitally native bond issuance

 Linklaters advised Bank of Communications Co., Ltd., Hong Kong Branch, on its successful issuance of US$300m Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) floating rate digitally native bonds (DNBs) due 2028. This transaction marks the first public offering of DNBs by a Chinese bank.

The DNBs were issued in dematerialised registered form and cleared through the Central Moneymarkets Unit (CMU) of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. The DNBs and the beneficial interests were created and recorded on HSBC’s Orion* digital asset platform. This transaction also marks the first issuance of floating rate DNBs on the platform.

The Linklaters team was led by capital markets partners Hanwen Yu and Gloria Cheung, with support from counsel Grace Wee, solicitors Xiaoming Zhong, Lily Wang and Jenny Sun. A separate team, led by counsel Beibei Ding, acted as legal adviser to the calculation agent. Solicitor Natalie Lam from the financial regulation group provided specialist support.

Linklaters’ capital markets partner Hanwen Yu commented:

Linklaters’ cross-jurisdictional capital markets team leads in the issuance of digital securities in Asia and globally, including advising on the first tokenised bond governed by Hong Kong law, the world’s first multi-currency digital green bond by the HKSAR Government, the first digitally native notes listed on HKEX by a HKSAR corporate by HSBC, the first cross-border tokenised financing transaction for Ant Digital Technologies, Zhuhai Huafa Group’s first public issuance of dual-listed digitally native bonds by a Chinese state-owned enterprise, and the World Bank’s inaugural issuance of digitally native securities on the new D-FMI DLT platform developed by Euroclear Bank.