Today it was announced that Cité Gestion bank has tokenized its shares using the Taurus digital asset platform. The Swiss private bank has CHF7 billion in assets under management. While it claims to be the first private bank to tokenize its shares, it is not the first Swiss bank to do so. Credit for that goes to Sygnum, which tokenized its shares in late 2020.

“At Cité Gestion, our vision is to enable our clients to take full advantage of technological progress in the capital markets and, in particular, the enormous potential for streamlining and efficiency gains that distributed ledger technology offers in this field,” said Christophe Utelli, deputy executive director of Cité Gestion. “It was important for our bank to be among the first to take advantage of the new possibilities offered by Swiss law.”

Meanwhile, Taurus, which provided the tokenization platform, said it participated in 15 tokenizations last year, with nearly half going to institutional or regulated entities. The tokenization complied with standards developed by the non-profit Swiss Capital Markets and Technology Association (CMTA).

“We believe that 2023 will mark a step change in the industry and we are ready to help private companies take the plunge,” said Sebastien Dessimoz, co-founder and managing partner of Taurus.

Switzerland has progressive laws on tokenization and has a special licensing regime for DLT trading facilities that allows direct access to retail investors and a single license for exchange, custody, and settlement. Taurus has a license from the Swiss regulator FINMA to operate a digital asset exchange.

In December, Taurus partnered with three high-profile Swiss banks who tested the issuance of tokenized structured products on the Ethereum blockchain public testnet. The banks were Credit Suisse, Pictet and Vontobel.