Partners with tZERO, Tezos Foundation and Megalodon for First STO Project, River Pla-za, a Luxury Riverside Development in Central Manchester
HONG KONG, CHINA –
Media OutReach
– October 31, 2019 – UK-based Alliance Investments, a direct-to-developer real estate
investment company, today announced its plans to tokenize £500m of real estate
projects across the UK over the next several years. The first project of its
real estate tokenization plan is River Plaza, a 180-unit luxury residential
development that is located on the banks of River Irwell and directly opposite
of Castlefield in Manchester. In collaboration with tZERO, Tezos Foundation and
Megalodon, Alliance Investments’ River Plaza project is the UK’s first real
estate-backed security token offering (STO) and one of only a handful of real
estate STO’s worldwide.
Alliance
Investments intends to tokenize at least £20m of the
value of River Plaza. The River Plaza STO will
be digitized using tZERO’s tokenization technology and Megalodon’s advisory
services and issued on the Tezos Blockchain. River Plaza’s security tokens will
provide investors with liquidity through tZERO’s secondary trading technology,
which powers the alternative trading system operated by PRO Securities, LLC, a
subsidiary of tZERO. The STO is expected to launch in Q1 of 2020.
Alliance
Investments CIO Rani Zahr said, “Raising funds through an STO is more
efficient, cost-effective, autonomous and democratic than traditional
financing. We believe that we are at the forefront of a technological change
that can disrupt the current funding paradigm and we are delighted to partner
with two global players that are leading blockchain innovation, tZERO and The
Tezos Foundation, for our first STO.”
A real
estate-based STO is the process of issuing digitally-enhanced equity securities
in a holding company that owns the real estate asset. More generally, security
tokens can be structured to represent a variety of ownership and economic
interests in an underlying asset, such as equity in a company that owns the
asset, an interest in debt secured by the real estate, a stream of income based
on cash flows from the asset or an interest in the capital growth of an
off-plan project, to name a few.
tZERO CEO
Saum Noursalehi said, “We firmly believe that digital
securities represented by security tokens are the future of how the world will
trade value. Tokenizing real estate will democratize access to this
traditionally exclusive asset class, and we are thrilled to partner with Alliance
Investments to advance our goal of tokenizing and trading all assets.”
Tezos
Foundation Board Member Hubertus Thonhauser stated, “We are impressed by
Alliance Investments’ entrepreneurial vision to redefine real estate ownership
and tZERO’s mission to make liquid assets available to a broad audience. It is
our mandate to power real world use cases of blockchain adoption with the most
advanced open source technology, and we are excited to work with Alliance and
tZERO to make this a reality.”
Megalodon
Managing Partner Esteban van Goor said, “We are glad to see a company like
Alliance Investments taking a lead in tokenizing its assets and are pleased to
advise them on their first STO.”
The £500m
of real estate projects will be tokenized over the next several years in all
parts of the UK with projects ranging from residential and student
accommodation to commercial and hospitality properties.
The River
Plaza building is scheduled to complete in Q3 of 2022. For more information
about River Plaza, visit www.riverplazamanchester.com.
