A&O Shearman advises Clearstream on D7 platform underpinning EIB’s first DLT-native and ECB collateral eligible commercial paper issuance

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has successfully issued a EUR77.5 million DLT-native commercial paper on Clearstream’s D7 platform. The transaction marks the first commercial paper issued in fully tokenized form on D7 and represents an important step forward in the digitalization of securities issuance and post-trade infrastructure.
 
The issuance was distributed to a group of institutional investors, including BIL, DekaBank, DZ BANK, Union Investment and Eurex Clearing, and demonstrates how distributed ledger technology (DLT) can be integrated within an established and regulated financial market framework.
 
The EIB transaction was carried out in compliance with the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR), demonstrating that innovative digital issuance models can coexist with established regulatory requirements governing securities settlement and custody across the European Union.
 
The transaction follows the European Central Bank's decision to accept certain DLT-native securities issued through central securities depositories as eligible collateral in Eurosystem credit operations. As a result, the transaction provides tangible evidence that digital securities can serve not only as investment instruments, but also as collateral within the broader financial ecosystem.

Driving the next generation of digital securities issuance

D7 has been developed by Clearstream to provide a digital alternative to traditional securities issuance processes. The platform enables issuers to create and manage electronic securities with enhanced speed, transparency, and flexibility while operating within a regulated market infrastructure.

Unlike conventional issuance processes that can involve multiple manual steps and legacy systems, D7 allows securities to be issued digitally and managed throughout their lifecycle on a modern platform supporting DLT-based tokenization capabilities.

Today, D7 has already achieved significant scale, processing approximately 45,000 digital security issuances each week, with more than 4 million digital securities issued and approximately EUR90 billion in digital issuance volume.