POELLATH advises Commerzbank AG on investment in new digital blockchain marketplaces

Both partners will invest together with the founding team of 360X in the development and operation of new marketplaces for digital asset classes.

The partnership aims to develop new digital marketplaces and ecosystems for existing real assets - such as art and real estate - based on blockchain. The new trading platforms will offer investors innovative investment opportunities in assets they previously did not have access to in this form. The assets will be made available for investment and trade via tokenization and fractionalization. Tokenized real assets are mapped on the blockchain to facilitate access for investors and also to be able to fractionalize the underlying asset.

To this end, the three partners are combining their strengths: Commerzbank as a partner for the digital banking world, Deutsche Börse as a specialist for market and exchange infrastructure and the experienced fintech founding team of 360X are therefore collaborating on the digital marketplaces of the future. The first reference transactions (minimum viable products) for two asset classes (investments in art and real estate) are already planned for later this year.

Commerzbank and Deutsche Börse have already gathered experience in blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT) for several years. In 2019, joint pilot transactions were executed via DLT for the first time.

POELLATH advised Commerzbank AG on legal matters related to the transaction with the following team:

• Tobias Jäger (partner, lead, M&A/venture capital, Munich).
• Philipp von Braunschweig (partner, M&A/private equity, Munich)
• Daniel Wiedmann (associated partner, antitrust law, Frankfurt)

The in-house lead advisors for Commerzbank were Benedikt Leffers, Maximilian Bettermann and Lars Kauer.