Securitize, a digital securities platform enabling both primary issuance as well as secondary trading, has announced a new tokenized asset that provides investors with exposure to a fund created by KKR.
KKR is a fabled buy-out firm and asset management company. KKR sponsors various funds with some providing access to alternative assets. Securitize has now announced that KKR’s Health Care Strategic Growth Fund II (HCSG II) is available on the Avalanche public blockchain. Securitize is describing the newly digitized asset as a “major step toward making institutional private market strategies more accessible to individual investors.”
Carlos Domingo, Securitize CEO, said that tokenization – or the process of digitizing securities – has the potenital to address some of the biggest challenges for individual investors when gaining access to alternative assets or private market securities:
“This new fund is an important step toward democratizing access to private equity investments by delivering more efficient access to institutional quality products.”
Dan Parant, Managing Director and Co-Head of U.S. Private Wealth at KKR, explained that tokenization can increase the ease of use for investors nad blockchain has the potential to play a big role in the future of private markets:
“We’re excited to be working with Securitize to be an early adopter of this technology and look forward to opening our investments up to a new audience of investors.”
The new Fund is a first for KKR and provides an opportunity to invest in KKR’s health care strategy which targets health care firms in North America and Europe. The Fund is available under Reg D 506c, a securities exemption that is available only to accredited investors.
Securitize notes that Avalanche is an “eco-friendly smart contract platform” that is built to scale – offering “near instant” transactions that works for both individual investors asa well as institutions.
“Financial markets demand innovation, and over the last two years we’ve seen dramatic leaps forward in the evolution of real-world assets moving on-chain and delivering on the promise of breakthrough technology for institutions,” said John Wu, President of Ava Labs. Wu added that he believes the partnership will “spur more blockchain activity” from top investment firms as others view it as advantageous for both sides.
Wilfred Daye, Head of Securitize Capital, said they are now a leading tokenization and distribution platform for investors and asset managers:
“The tokenized fund we have developed is a significant breakthrough in unlocking investor access to private equity investments.”
Many, if not most all observers, anticipate a future of digital-only securities moving away from the paper-based, analog past. It is more a question of when, not if. But progress has been slow as traditional financial services firms have been hesitant to adopt the new technology that holds the potential to remove significant cost from the issuance/management/trading process while enabling a new generation of esoteric assets for all investors. Securitize is one of a few firms that are leading in this sector
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