Simmons & Simmons has assisted major banking group UniCredit on the structuring and subscription, together with public development bank Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP), of the first corporate bond in minibond format in Italy that is natively digital and tokenised on a public blockchain.
The pioneering corporate bond was issued by E4 Computer Engineering S.p.A., a leading European solution provider in the fields of supercomputing, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing.
The transaction, valued at €5 million and 50% guaranteed by export credit agency SACE, represents a milestone in the digital evolution of Italian financial markets, being the first minibond issuance compliant with Italian government legislation the FinTech Decree to be fully digitalised and recorded on the public Polygon POS blockchain, a leading public blockchain platform.
Weltix S.p.A. acted as register manager, while BlockInvest provided the technological platform.
The minibond, which has a duration of six years (including one year of pre-amortisation), was subscribed in equal parts by UniCredit and CDP and will finance strategic investments for the expansion of E4's Rubiera facility and the construction of a new data centre.
Simmons & Simmons acted as legal and tax advisor to the transaction with a multidisciplinary team composed of partner Paola Leocani, counsel Baldassarre Battista and, for blockchain-related matters, counsel Ugo Malvagna and trainee Francesco Bertolin. Tax aspects were handled by partner Marco Palanca and supervising associate Luca Bocchetti.
