London Stock Exchange trials blockchain for shares in Italy

London's Stock Exchange is set to start using blockchain to improve transparency for shareholding information among unlisted businesses.

According to a news report by CityAM, the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) will use Hyperledger Fabric, one of the open source blockchain frameworks hosted by The Linux Foundation to make info on private SMEs digital. The end goal is to draw more mature investors.

Borsa Italiana, the Italian stock exchange, will kick off the trial by conducting a small test using blockchain to hold a shared registry of shareholder transactions and records. Only issuers, investors and regulators (authorized personnel) will have access to it.

Even though the LSEG joined the Hyperledger project in 2015, together with IBM and a couple of other financial institutions, this is the first time it began testing the technology.

"We are testing the use of blockchain technology in a financial business network where data segregation and confidentiality is vital," said chief operating officer and chief information officer of London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), Chris Corrado.

"Sharing secure and transparent critical network data across shareholder networks is difficult using traditional system," said Marie Weck, IBM Blockchain general manager.

"Blockchain is poised to help remove some of these barriers in traditional methods for the transfer of value -- much as the Internet did for the exchange of information in the late 1990s."

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