Fineqia International Inc has announced that its subsidiary Fineqia AG has received authorisation from the Vienna Stock Exchange (VSE) in Europe to list ETNs with digital assets as their underlying collateral.
The firm writes that the admittance of Fineqia AG’s ‘debt issuance program’ by the VSE enables it to automatically list ETNs that adhere to its base prospectus, without requiring each ETN’s listing to be individually approved. To that end, Fineqia AG renewed its prospectus on March 22 with Liechtenstein’s regulator, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA).
European regulators have taken the lead on approving a variety of underlying digital assets, the firm writes, in contrast to the US, where bitcoin has been the only such asset to receive local approval. Fineqia AG’s base prospectus allows its ETNs to hold crypto currencies such as Avalanche, bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, NEAR, Polkadot, Tezos, TRON and Uniswap as well as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
“The pathway is now open for us to bring signature and differentiated products to the European market,” says Fineqia’s CEO Bundeep Singh Rangar. “The approvals by the VSE and FMA gives us something akin to a master license to swiftly and efficiently list ETNs that are fully compliant with regulations.”
The firm writes that the VSE’s Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF) is rapidly becoming a choice venue in Europe to trade debt securities, such as ETNs, backed by digital assets.
A dozen such ETNs have recently been listed on the three-decade old MTF, which collectively hold more than USD3 billion in AUM.
Fineqia previously announced it had partnered with global index provider FTSE Russell, a division of the London Stock Exchange Group Plc (LSEG), that will provide benchmark pricing data and distribution capabilities for its ETNs.
The base prospectus was approved pursuant to the EU’s Prospectus Regulation (EU) 2017/1129, for offering in the EU member states of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Spain.
Fineqia AG, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Canada-based Fineqia International Inc. is domiciled in Liechtenstein, which is a member state of the European Economic Area (EEA). The EEA includes 27 European Union (EU) countries as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway, which collectively comprise a single market.
