Linklaters advises consortium on its collaboration with the Banque de France, the Swiss National Bank and the BIS Innovation Hub on a wholesale CBDC cross-border experiment
Linklaters has advised a private sector consortium led by Accenture and including Credit Suisse, Natixis, R3, SIX Digital Exchange and UBS, which has today announced that, together with the Banque de France, the Swiss National Bank and the BIS Innovation Hub, it has conducted a cross-border settlement experiment (entitled Project Jura) using two wholesale CBDCs (“wCBDC”) and a digital financial instrument. The full report on Project Jura and its findings can be viewed here.
This is the latest work for Linklaters’ market-leading global fintech team. Earlier this year, Linklaters advised the European Investment Bank (EIB) that issued its first ever notes in digital form on the Ethereum public blockchain, which were issued on a delivery versus payment basis against CBDC issued as part of another experiment carried out by the Banque de France.
Michael Voisin, Capital Markets Partner at Linklaters, says:
“We are delighted to have advised the private sector consortium led by Accenture and including Credit Suisse, Natixis, R3, SIX Digital Exchange and UBS on Project Jura, a novel cross-border settlement experiment. This experiment included highly complex and novel issues relating to cross-border settlement in wCBDC on a single platform with three sub-networks, the issuance, redemption and secondary market settlement of digital financial instruments on a delivery versus payment basis against euro wCBDC, as well as cross-border transactions involving the payment versus payment settlement of euro wCBDC and Swiss franc wCBDC between banks domiciled in France and Switzerland.”
The Linklaters London team was led by partner Michael Voisin, Counsel and Head of UK Fintech Richard Hay, associate Namrata Praveen and trainees Luke Griffin and Ray Foo. The Paris team was led by partners Véronique Delaittre and Bertrand Sénéchal with Counsel Vincent Poilleux.
Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek advised the private sector consortium from a Swiss law perspective on Project Jura. For more information on Project Jura, please see the press releases issued by Accenture, the Banque de France, the Swiss National Bank and the BIS Innovation Hub, or watch this short video.
