German Real Estate Company Issues $24M Bond on Stellar

Vonovia, one of the leading real estate companies in Germany, announced it had issued $24 million worth of bonds on the Stellar blockchain.

According to the company’s press release, the short term bond will have a maturity date of three years and will be used to issue security tokens representing real estate ownership rights. Vonovia used Firstwire, an online marketplace, to issue the tokens independently from Stellar. The company previously used Firstwire to issue a promissory note loan of around $61 million in September 2019.

Using the Stellar blockchain will enable the company to transfer ownership rights of the tokens.

Helene von Roeder, the chief financial officer at Vonovia, said tokenization provided the company with a fast and easy way to finance itself. She also said they expected tokenization to play an increasingly important role in the future of capital markets.

“Issues are transparent and traceable in real-time, which guarantees a professional transaction standard. It also enables us to address new investors globally,” she said in the release.

Vonovia’s tokenization was made possible by the latest German legislation, which legalized the issuance of digital securities at the end of 2020. In mid-December, Germany removed the requirement to have a paper certificate for the sale of securities. This paved the way for the issuance of digital securities on blockchain platforms.