Horizon receives strategic investment & welcomes new Chief Strategy Officer, what’s next?
By Vanessa Malone
This week, we announced that Horizon has received a strategic investment from Element ASA, an innovative investment company with a growing interest in blockchain technology projects with defensible IP.
In addition, we also welcomed James Haft, founder and CEO of PALcapital, LLC who will be providing services to Horizon as the Chief Strategy Officer. PALcapital is a New York City-based merchant bank focused on distributed ledger technologies. The company is an advisor to and shareholder of Element.
Element invests in global growth-stage companies which leverage the digitization of information to create shareholder value. The company identifies undervalued companies and projects, where infrastructure and other basic work, if necessary, have in large, been completed and where the investee companies are executing their go-to-market strategies.
That said, our go-to-market strategy is in full effect. We’re proud to catapult into 2020 with our proprietary compliance and trading technology. We have what we believe to be the first complete and integrated blockchain tech stack which supports the entire life-cyle of digital securities from issuance through to secondary trading.
This is important because we also believe that our blockchain ecosystem, which is offered to entities around the world, has the capability of bringing speed, efficiency, transparency, access, and increased investor and issuer protections to capital markets, among other benefits.
We’re already seeing our blockchain software solutions thrive. In December 2019, the first marketplace powered by Horizon’s compliance and trading technology went live in Brazil via Piemonte Holding, an A-rated Brazilian bank which closed its R$ 66m (US$ 16.2m) private bond issuance and successfully completed the launch of a secondary market for the Piemonte “Smart Bond” on Ethereum.
While most other blockchain bond issuances have been on private blockchains or part of an internal pilot program, this is the first bond issuance on Ethereum to include a public secondary trading platform for qualified subscribers to buy and sell bonds and offer liquidity potential prior to bond maturity.
This year, we are working to introduce more marketplaces licensed by entities around the world that are powered by Horizon’s tech stack.
We have signed an agreement with a U.S. broker dealer working to build an SEC-registered ATS. In addition, Horizon has a signed agreement with a regulated entity in Australia, and an MOU with the Antigua and Barbuda Ministry of Finance & Corporate Governance, to build secondary trading venues using Horizon’s fintech solutions.
Aside from traditional marketplaces, we are also gearing up to announce specialty exchanges which cater to large affinity groups. We are aiming to lower the barrier of entry and speed up mass adoption of blockchain solutions to issuers, investors, and other market participants who want access to new markets.
This year is off to a great start, and we can’t wait to share more about the marketplaces our proprietary compliance and trading technology is going to power in 2020.
To learn more about Horizon’s one-stop-shop for digital securities, visit https://www.horizonfintex.com/. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or all three so you don’t miss any upcoming news.
