Financial Giant BlackRock Joins Axoni Distributed Ledger Platform
BlackRock, the world's largest multinational investment and asset manager, has joined Axoni's distributed ledger platform to help match and reconcile post-trade data on stock swaps. BlackRock joins financial powerhouses Citigroup and Goldman Sachs Group on the Axoni's Veris system.
Axoni's software will be integrated with Black Rock's Aladdin operating system, which was developed to help track the company's financial risk. Aladdin is now also sold to wealth manager and other clients. The Veris platform is designed to allow all parties on a trade to match and confirm all trade terms upfront. It also enables all parties to remain synchronized on post-trade events like amendments, positions and cash flows, throughout the entire lifecycle of the trade.
The move from Blackrock stems from many years of research and trials using blockchain and a distributed ledger network for the post-trade management of derivatives, including equity swaps. As the market for equity swamps has grown over the past few years, it has also introduced operational complexities when it comes to keeping up with trade volumes. Axoni's solution manages the end-to-end lifecycle for equity swaps to address these challenges efficiently and accurately.
The Veris platform uses the ISDA Common Domain Model (CDM), an open-source, standardized model for derivative trade processing. It is designed to bring consistency to how firms represent derivative events and products with the goal of reducing the costs and risks associated with inconsistencies in trade processing.
"The Axoni platform will help us build scalability while mitigating risks in the investment lifecycle beginning with equity swaps," said Mark Cox, COO of global investment operations at BlackRock. "We see great potential in a distributed ledger network for uncleared derivatives as we continue to prove out this new area of innovation.”
“Axoni is excited to add BlackRock to the network," said Carl Forsberg, head of OTC markets at Axoni. "Sell-side participants will benefit immensely from using a shared platform with one of the industry’s most important swap counterparties. BlackRock will bring significant efficiencies to the network by driving adoption of standardized post-trade swap data models and workflows.”
BlackRock Investment Operations plans to use Veris internally with a long-term goal of making its capabilities available to all Aladdin clients after additional integration and development.
Edited by Luke Bellos
