Schoenherr has advised crowdinvesting company CONDA AG on digitalizing the shares and enabled registered shares to be managed via blockchain technology.
According to Schoenherr, this represents the first-ever digitalization of shares in an Austrian joint stock company that were linked to digital tokens.
The tokens are digital units which were mined exclusively by CONDA based on a blockchain (distributed ledger technology) protocol and given to the company shareholders. Each token represents one share in CONDA. When a shareholder transfers a token to another person, the transfer is recorded in the blockchain and, on that basis, the transfer is also registered in CONDA's share ledger. The transfer of a token is thus the equivalent of a share transfer.
According to Schoenherr, “the transaction was challenging, because neither courts nor legal scholars have yet shed light on the issue of allowing the segmentation of registered shares in the form of tokens. Also, there are no guidelines on the legal implementation of a transaction involving the digitalization of shares.”
Founded in Austria and available across Europe, CONDA's alternative financing platform aims to set new standards for the processes surrounding security tokens.
The Schoenherr team consisted of Partner Thomas Kulnigg and Associates Zurab Simonishvili and Sascha Smets.
