TCM & Technologies Pte Ltd (TCM), an investment and advisory company offering institution-recognizable investments products and advisory services focused on the digital economy, and Trovio Pty Ltd, a technology company focused on digitization, tokenization and provenance services for the commodities and carbon industries, have announced their merger to establish Trovio Group Pte Ltd (Trovio Group).
The merger — led by Ellerston Capital, Sun Hung Kai Strategic Capital and Amherst Holdings — was “heavily oversubscribed with significant interest from institutional investors, valuing the combined group at over AUD200M,” according to an update shared with CI.
The investment will aim to enable growth in strategic tech initiatives currently underway, “further enhance the digital fund offerings with plans to launch a number of new fund strategies in early 2022 as well as enable key hires across the technology and advisory divisions.”
The announcement also mentioned that the combined group creates “a fully-integrated, technology-centric, financial services and investment management partner capable of ramping up to provide access to the digital asset and Web 3.0 ecosystem in the Asia-Pacific region.”
In doing so, Trovio will continue its “focus on developing and supporting gateways to the new economy by delivering market-entry strategies for corporates and institutional-grade investment products for this new asset class.”
The update further noted that the merger creates “immediate value for investors by bridging Trovio’s commercial technology nous, with the institutional infrastructure and distribution of TCM.”
The TCM Digital Asset Income Fund, for instance, is “a market-neutral fund designed to extract yield through strategically participating, via smart contracts, in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols — providing a stable and profitable fixed-income vehicle for institutional investors.”
The proprietary technology and team behind Trovio “originates from DigiCash, the inventor of digital currencies, providing the new group with … technical expertise required for this emerging asset class in cryptography, smart contracts and institutional grade financial markets solutions.”
Trovio Group comes into being “amid the ongoing convergence of technology and financial services. Global Fintech investment jumped over 12% in H1 2021, to $98 billion, according to professional services network KPMG.”
In this landscape, the Trovio Group will “act as a partner to traditional institutional participants across the commodities and investment communities, offering them insight and opportunities in the digital asset ecosystem,” the announcement added.
Before the merger, TCM and Trovio have had “a successful track record working together over a number of years in technology, advisory and digital asset management,” the update revealed.
They have led the launch one of the first public blockchain tokens backed by government guaranteed gold, “as well as advising and leading the launch of the Fantom blockchain, amongst a host of other projects.”
As part of the merger, the Australian feeder fund, Digital Native Assets, will be “rebranded in alignment with the wider group as TCM Digital Asset Fund Australia (TCM DAF Australia).”
The announcement also noted that this “realignment brings the Australian operation in line with the flagship fund, the TCM DAF, as well as the DeFi yield farming strategies, TCM DAIF and the ventures arm of the business, TCM Ventures SP.”
The company will also continue to “expand its deployment of its core technology to the commodities and carbon industries, enabling their partners to interact directly with the digital asset and web 3.0 ecosystems,” the update noted.
Jon Deane, CEO at Trovio Group stated:
“The Trovio Group brings together two world class businesses – creating a new type of enterprise designed for the digital economy and Web 3.0. One that understands the emergent trends and the technology risks and the opportunities within the ecosystem that is currently being created. A firm that can provide our clients with the ability to interact and benefit from the future growth and commercialization of the digital economy. Our view is that all assets will eventually be transacted in a digital format, and opportunity exists for those that leverage technology solutions to interact with this ecosystem, as well as the technology’s ultimate adoption as an asset class in its own right.”
Trovio Pty Ltd raised AUD6M in January 2021, at AUD26M post valuation, “as part of a growth strategy to widen its product suite.”
The Trovio platform offers its commodity partners with B2C, B2B and tokenized distribution channels. The firm also works with provenance tracking data suppliers to “directly integrate this data into its digital registry and transactional solutions, allowing the data to move seamlessly across trades.”
The firm is also “a market maker on a number of digital marketplaces for traditional assets in tokenized forms,” the update noted.