Equiniti and Bullish form coalition on tokenised shares

Equiniti, the UK shareholder-services group, and Bullish, the cryptoasset exchange operator, said on 24 September 2026 that they had formed the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition, a working group intended to develop standards and infrastructure for tokenised securities that stay connected to a company's official shareholder register. The other organisations named at launch are Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions and DriveWealth, though the announcement's wording suggests the list of participants may grow.

Nothing has been issued, listed or launched. The coalition describes itself as an open, non-exclusive, multi-stakeholder industry group, and membership is explicitly non-binding: joining does not commit any participant to a commercial agreement, to issuing or listing a security, to providing liquidity, or to supporting any specific product. No UK issuer has been named, no technical standard has been published, and no deployment date has been set.

The announcement matters to UK readers because of what it is trying to solve, not because of anything it has yet delivered. Under UK company law, membership of a company is centred on entry in a register that the company itself keeps, distinct from the beneficial ownership many investors hold through a nominee. A tokenised share that ignores that register, or duplicates it inconsistently, raises questions about who actually owns what. Equiniti's role as a share registrar puts it at the centre of that problem, and the coalition's stated aim is to build a link between blockchain-based tokens and that authoritative record, so that voting, dividends and other corporate actions can, in principle, follow the same holder as the token.

What the coalition plans to build

The coalition has set out four initial focus areas: preserving issuer and shareholder rights, interoperability between systems, infrastructure to support adoption, and development of an open market ecosystem. Within those areas, the announcement lists a programme of potential work rather than completed output: evaluating blockchain and smart-contract architectures, developing interoperability standards, analysing regulatory and compliance requirements, and running prototypes and pilots. It also mentions engagement with policymakers and standards bodies, though it does not name which ones.

Bullish and Equiniti say they are developing infrastructure designed to connect issuer-sponsored tokenised securities to an authoritative shareholder register, while also interoperating with both traditional and blockchain-based market infrastructure. That is a description of intended design, not a disclosed architecture. No reference model, smart-contract specification or data schema has been published, so it is not yet possible to say how a blockchain transfer would be reconciled with the register, or which record would prevail if the two diverged.

The coalition's next scheduled milestone is a meeting with issuers and other capital-markets participants at the New York Stock Exchange on 27 October 2026. No agenda or attendee list has been released.

Why the shareholder register matters

Under sections 112 and 113 of the Companies Act 2006, which received royal assent on 8 November 2006, a person who agrees to become a member of a UK company becomes a member once their name is entered in that company's register of members, and every company must maintain a register recording its members and their shareholdings. That register is the authoritative record of who is a registered member, though it does not capture every investor with an economic interest in the shares: many hold their stake beneficially through a nominee rather than appearing on the register themselves.

This is the distinction the coalition is trying to address. A blockchain token that simply tracks the price of a share, or gives a holder a claim against an intermediary, is not the same thing as being entered on the issuer's register. An "issuer-sponsored" token, as the coalition describes it, is intended to be connected to that register, though the announcement does not specify whether or how a token transfer would be kept in step with a corresponding change in the registered holding. Whether any given implementation actually achieves that, for a UK company, would depend on the legal structure chosen, the company's articles, and how the register itself is designed to record token holders.

Rights that need to survive the move on-chain

The coalition's stated objective is that an issuer-sponsored model can help preserve ownership rights, and DriveWealth's own remarks in the announcement go further, describing the model as preserving real ownership and shareholder rights. Those are objectives asserted by coalition participants, not a demonstrated outcome. No governing law, share terms, custody arrangement or independent legal analysis has been published alongside the announcement.

Several practical questions remain open. It is not established whether a future token holder would be entered directly in a UK issuer's register of members, or would instead hold an interest through a nominee or intermediary, as many investors already do with conventional shares. No mechanism has been disclosed for record dates, proxy voting, dividend payments, rights issues, takeovers, stock splits, withholding tax, lost private keys, sanctioned wallets, intermediary insolvency, or correction of an erroneous blockchain transfer. Any of those could affect whether a token holder actually receives what a registered shareholder would expect, and whether any loss could be recovered.

What it could mean for UK issuers and investors

No UK issuer has been named as part of this initiative, and the coalition's first scheduled meeting is in New York rather than London. The practical relevance to UK companies at this stage is that the questions the coalition is trying to answer, chiefly how a token relates to the company's register of members, are the same questions that would arise under the Companies Act 2006 for any UK issuer considering tokenisation.

If a UK-listed company were ever to pursue an issuer-sponsored token, an investor would need to know, before committing money, whether they would become a registered member with a direct claim, or would instead hold an interest through an intermediary with a different risk profile. Tokenised securities that carry voting or dividend rights can also lose value, and none of the coalition's current material describes any Financial Services Compensation Scheme or Financial Ombudsman Service protection attaching to a future product, because no product, issuer or regulated entity has been specified.

The UK regulatory backdrop

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) set out its position on cryptoassets in policy statement PS19/22, published on 31 July 2019. It said that a token conferring rights similar to a share, including voting or dividend rights, is likely to be treated as a security token, with its precise legal character depending on its rights, transferability and the applicable company law. Tokenisation, in other words, does not remove the need to work through ordinary company law and financial-services regulation.

Separately, the Bank of England and the FCA operate the Digital Securities Sandbox, which allows eligible UK-established firms to test, and after passing the relevant approval gate, to conduct live issuance, trading and settlement of real digital securities, including equities. According to the FCA's page as last updated on 30 June 2026, the sandbox is due to run until December 2028, subject to a possible government extension, and applications were expected to close around March 2027. Nothing in the coalition's announcement indicates that the coalition itself, Bullish or Equiniti holds or has applied for a Digital Securities Sandbox approval connected with this initiative.

What has not happened

It is worth being precise about the limits of the announcement. Bullish agreed in May 2026 to acquire Equiniti, in a transaction the companies valued at US$4.2bn, and as of 25 September 2026 that deal had not completed; the companies expected completion in January 2027, subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Equiniti is not yet part of Bullish.

Bullish separately offers a facility under which its own registered shareholders can create and withdraw tokenised representations of BLSH shares, while the underlying registered shares remain on Equiniti's register unless separately transferred. That existing facility is not the coalition's product, is US-focused, and should not be read as evidence that a UK tokenised-share offering is available or imminent.

There is also a gap between how Bullish described its capabilities in May 2026, when transaction materials referred to a unified ledger having been built, and the more tentative, future-facing language the September coalition announcement uses about developing infrastructure, standards, prototypes and pilots. The available material does not reconcile which components exist today and which remain to be built.

Finally, no coalition charter, governance document, membership agreement or decision-making process has been published, so it is not yet clear how standards will be agreed, who will hold a vote, or whether the coalition's output will be made public.

What to watch next

The clearest near-term milestone is the coalition's meeting with issuers and other capital-markets participants at the New York Stock Exchange on 27 October 2026. Beyond that, readers with an interest in this area should look for: any expansion of the participant list, publication of draft technical or governance standards, a named pilot or prototype, confirmation of whether any participant has sought or received a Digital Securities Sandbox approval, and formal confirmation of whether Bullish's acquisition of Equiniti has completed. Official detail on the sandbox itself is published by the FCA, and the Companies Act 2006's register requirements are set out in legislation.gov.uk.