Societe Generale SFH issues 100m Euro bonds as Security Token

Societe Generale SFH, the covered bond vehicle of Societe Generale, issued the first covered bond (EUR 100m) as a security token on a public blockchain.

On 18 April 2019 Societe Generale SFH, a subsidiary of Societe Generale Group, issued EUR 100m of covered bonds (“obligations de financement de l’habitat” or “OFH”) as a security token, directly registered on the Ethereum blockchain. OFH Tokens have been rated Aaa / AAA by Moody’s and Fitch and have been fully subscribed by Societe Generale.

This is the first pilot that has been developed by Societe Generale and Societe Generale FORGE, one of the 60 internal startups launched via the Internal Startup Call, the Group’s entrepreneurial program. This startup experiments disruptive business solutions using blockchain technology to develop new digital capital market activities.

This live transaction explores a more efficient process for bond issuances. Many areas of added value are predicted, among which, product scalability and reduced time to market, computer code automation structuring, thus better transparency, faster transferability and settlement. It proposes a new standard for issuances and secondary market bond trading and reduces cost and the number of intermediaries.

 Gide Loyrette Nouel was appointed as legal advisor to the OFH Token issuer and PwC France and francophone Africa was involved as blockchain advisor.

In the field of blockchain and Distributed Ledger technologies, Societe Generale has been involved for several years in numerous initiatives, such as we.trade, the first blockchain-based trade finance platform now available to all its corporate clients in France, or the launch of komgo SA to digitalize the trade and commodities finance sector through a blockchain based open platform.