At the end of June, Singapore conglomerate Keppel Corporation announced a new $1 billion euro commercial paper programme through arranger and dealer DBS.
It sounds run-of-the-mill, but for the debt capital markets (DCM) in Asia, and across the world, this may prove to be hugely significant.
Keppel will be the debut corporate issuer on DBS FIX Marketplace, which the bank calls Asia’s first fully digital and automated fixed income execution (FIX) platform.
Through it, issuers can directly connect with investors if they wish.
The time is ripe for traditional ways of bond origination to make way for a more digital approach
Clifford Lee, global head of fixed income at DBS, says: “The time is ripe for traditional ways of bond origination to make way for a more digital approach, to do what has been aspired for so long – by taking the first step towards the creation of an independent platform that allows bond issuers efficient and effective direct access to the marketplace and bond investors.”
The key technology partner in the project is London and Italy-based fintech Nivaura, pioneer of the General-purpose Legal Mark-up Language (GLML) that makes legal template documents for new issues machine-readable as structured data.
That
