CIMB, CapBridge to provide companies access to private capital via investment platform and 1X

KUALA LUMPUR (Bernama): CIMB Bank Bhd’s recent memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Singapore’s CapBridge Pte Ltd will facilitate capital raising and trading of shares for private companies through the latter’s investment platform and the 1exchange (1X) private securities exchange. 

This MoU will see CIMB Bank and CapBridge collaborating to offer the bank’s customers in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia access to private capital and liquidity through the holistic CapBridge private capital ecosystem, CIMB said in a statement here, today.

The CapBridge Investment platform is a private capital raising platform for growth stage and pre-initial public offering (IPO) companies; while 1X is a trading platform which facilitates a buyer-seller match for private securities listed on the exchange by using blockchain to register and track the shareholdings of investors who trade on the platform. 

The wide-ranging partnership provides a unique value proposition to CIMB’s SME (small and medium enterprise) and mid-sized corporation clients looking to raise capital and have part of their shares traded, while remaining private and in full control of their businesses.

Victor Lee Meng Teck, chief executive officer (CEO) of Group Commercial Banking, CIMB Group, said: "As the main banker for companies wishing to raise funding on CapBridge’s platforms, CIMB is even better-positioned to help its SME and mid-corp customers access the capital they need to grow their business.

"In line with Forward23, CIMB’s next mid-term growth plan, this collaboration with CapBridge also further strengthens our refocused SME proposition to help them grow through tech-driven end-to-end solutions, and by transforming our customer journey.”

Meanwhile, Johnson Chen, founder and CEO of CapBridge said, "With the CapBridge ecosystem, private companies have a fully integrated private capital solution.”

The private companies also can gain access to both growth capital through primary fundraising, as well as enable partial liquidity via secondary trading of private securities on 1X subsequently, he said.

"As of today, we are already helping companies list on 1X and we look forward to CIMB’s clients joining our growing ecosystem, and working closely with CIMB Bank to bring our innovative suite of private market capital services to even more growth companies in the ASEAN region.”

Tapping on blockchain infrastructure for security, 1X, together with its trust partners, harnesses the immutability and connectivity of the global public Ethereum network to record share ownership. 

1X investors with digital wallets can thus directly check their real-time shareholdings without going through a trust administrator. 

The exchange can also potentially connect to the millions of digital wallets actively seeking regulated and tradeable private equities, thus linking companies to a truly global liquidity or capital pool, Chen added. - Bernama