Private capital markets have long been opaque and closed to all but a few wealthy investors. A host of new-generation capital market platforms are seeking to change that.
“The opportunities for most accredited investors are pretty small. In virtually all cases, a closed set of very wealthy and well-connected investors are shown everything, and the rest have no access,” says iSTOX co-founder and COO Darius Liu.
iSTOX is the first Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) regulated platform offering issuance, settlement, custody, and secondary trading of digitised securities. Backed by SGX, Hanwha Asset Management and Tokai Tokyo Financial Holdings, it claims it can help a wider pool of investors access investment opportunities such as private equity and debt that were previously out of reach.
It is one of Singapore’s private capital market platforms seeking to capture the rise in demand for secondary deals in the region. We explored these platforms in depth in our recent report, SE Asia Private Marketplaces 2020.
Edited excerpts of an interview with Liu:-
