Connecting Closed Companies and Investors, Citi Launches First Tokenized Depositary Receipts

NEW YORK - Citi announced the launch of Digital Depositary Receipts for closed shares on June 11, 2026. A new model that is direct and transparent, which expands access to the closed market for both issuers and global investors. This launch is the first for a global financial services company that also acts as an issuer and custodian for tokenized depositary receipts representing closed companies.

As the time it takes for companies to conduct IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) increases, many closed companies tend to seek alternative ways to access liquidity without having to rely on a still fragmented secondary market. These markets tend to involve complex structures, require many intermediaries, and have less transparent costs.

Citi's latest solution comes to address this gap by offering an efficient, cost-effective, and fully digital-based solution for a market segment of capital markets that have been known to be less liquid.

Based on the foundation of the industry-leading Digital Depositary and Custody business, Citi's latest model uses tokenized depositary receipts to provide a flexible, institutional-grade alternative that can meet the scale of the closed market needs. While other structures such as third-party Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) continue to play an important role in the market, Citi's model can reduce potential complexity and hidden costs because Citi acts as a single issuer as well as a trusted custodian bank.

Digital Depositary Receipts implements the depositary receipts product from Citi Issuer Services on shares in a closed market, using the blockchain infrastructure operated by SIX - one of the world's first fully regulated digital Custodial and Settlement Institutions (LPP). In collaboration with SIX, Citi acts as a custodian bank on the platform, responsible for the settlement of transactions and the storage of tokenized depositary receipts.

This new solution is officially operational in conjunction with the first transaction between Kaleido, a tokenization and digital asset platform that is also a Citi portfolio company, and several investors from the Wealth business line, which is supported by the Secondary Private Markets business line at Citi. This successful launch is an effort by the entire Citi team as a coordinated unity (One Citi), bringing together the Issuer Services, Custody, Wealth, Markets, and Ventures business teams to improve the client experience while building an expandable model for future issuances.

Head of Partnerships and Innovation for Citi's Services business, Biswarup Chatterjee said, as the closed market continues to grow, the need for diverse and trusted access points is increasing.

"Our Digital Depositary Receipts product is designed to provide superior client service, maintain asset security, and facilitate capital market activities with the same level of rigor as that underlying traditional financial markets. The interoperability of this product will allow Citi to further support more issuers and investors, as the infrastructure of the digital asset market develops," he said in a written statement, Monday, July 20.

This innovation is designed to ensure that issuers receive distribution and transfer results efficiently without having to make public records or change the primary ownership rights over assets. The company still has control over voting rights and a simpler capitalization table management structure, while expanding its reach to more investors.

For Wealth business line clients, this product expands access to a variety of offerings through an already familiar investment structure. By integrating tokenized depositary receipts into Citi's Wealth platform, Citi ensures that clients have more investment options while maintaining the operational security and investment experience that investors expect.

"Seeing how digital assets affect the development of the financial market, our priority is to ensure that Citi Wealth clients can engage in this development in a safe and familiar way," said Deborah Querub, Head of Digital Assets for Wealth.

"We are focused on expanding access to a variety of new investment opportunities responsibly while maintaining the structure, protection, and experience that our clients expect. This transaction is a step in bringing digital capabilities to expand investment options for our Wealth clients," he added.

With the completion of the initial issuance of Citi Digital Depositary Receipts on June 11, 2026 with Kaleido, Steve Cerveny, Founder and CEO of Kaleido said: "Closed companies like us are growing faster than any other type of company around us. This model finally brings a level of professionalism and transparency to the capital raising in closed markets that we have not had access to before. Citi Digital Depositary Receipts allows us to explore new growth paths while maintaining the agility that is the hallmark of closed companies and it is very beneficial for founders who have long-term planning. "

Citi is currently considering further development of this service so that it can operate on various financial market infrastructures, both in digital and traditional financial market infrastructures, as well as on various blockchain networks.