On the back of Switzerland’s progressive legal framework on DLT since February 2021, a new license for Deutsche Bank-backed securities services provider Taurus is seen as a step on the way towards access for retail investors to private markets.
Taurus hosts a digital-asset marketplace called TDX, which announced on 24 January that it had been authorised, by Switzerlands financial markets supervisory authority, to let retail investors set up accounts and trade tokenised securities and digital assets over its platform, The Banker reports. Taurus is backed by Deutsche Bank.
For comments, The Banker has spoken with Patrick Stäuble, who leads a platform called Teylor which supports lending transactions between financial institutions and small to medium-sized businesses. He sees two segments among the investors who are coming in: those who come to trade crypto such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, and those who seek a path to more traditional assets via private equity and unlisted companies. The outlet quotes him:
“Today, for retail players, accessing a private equity fund is not an easy task, because some of these funds may not be interested in that type of investor — I think that the digital realm becomes a means to access this asset class in a way that is easy, legal and safe.”