London Stock Exchange Group launched its Digital Markets Infrastructure platform for private funds in September last year. Since then the platform has added evergreen funds and partnered with Apex Group automate the full investor lifecycle.

Dr. Darko Hajdukovic, head of Digital Markets Infrastructure (DMI) at LSEG, told Market Media that the group launched the Digital Markets Infrastructure project because it envisages a world where tokenized assets make capital markets more efficient from issuance, tokenization and distribution to post-trade asset settlement and servicing. The platform is powered by Microsoft Azure to bring blockchain-powered scale and efficiencies for the full asset lifecycle across multiple asset classes.

On 15 September 2025 LSEG said in a statement that its Digital Markets Infrastructure platform for private funds had completed its first transaction. The first transaction involved MembersCap, general partner of MCM Fund 1, executing a primary fundraise with Archax, the UK-based regulated digital asset exchange, acting as nominee for a major web-3 foundation.

“At LSEG we are very keen not to create solutions in an ivory tower,” he added. “We are working very closely with our strategic partners to solve their pain points.”

Hajdukovic highlighted that distributed ledger technology (DLT) can improve the lengthy issuance process for private funds and the settlement process for transactions which can take up to 40 days.

“Applying DLT makes settlement programmable, so transactions can be settled at any time,” he added. “Clients can choose to  take 40 days or settle atomically.”

Atomic settlement onchain is the simultaneous exchange of assets and payment, often in real-time, with smart contracts ensuring that all the relevant conditions have been met.

“To get people excited to adopt DLT technology, we connected the DMI platform to LSEG Workspace terminals, our data business which have 400,000 users,” Hajdukovic added.

In addition to making private funds more operationally efficient, funds can potentially attract more investors via Workspace. General Partners (GPs), the fund managers, can interact at scale with institutions on a platform they already use, and investors are able to discover, analyse, and access new private market investment opportunities that were previously hard to reach.

In February this year LSEG said in a statement it was collaborating with Apex Group, who has $3.5 trillion in assets under administration. Apex Group’s global fund servicing infrastructure is the first service provider to connect with DMI.

Fund managers serviced by Apex Group will be able to access DMI through Apex Digital Liquidity & Distribution Service (Apex Digital 3.0), a digital custody and distribution platform giving fund managers a single gateway to manage investors at scale. Apex Digital 3.0 links directly into DMI which is fully integrated into LSEG’s Workspace.

Peter Hughes, founder and chief executive of Apex Group, said in a statement: “Private markets have lacked the direct connectivity and efficient investor aggregation needed to access global pools of capital efficiently. Together with LSEG, we’re changing that.”

This initial phase automates the full investor lifecycle, while establishing the digital foundation for future blockchain- and AI-enabled connectivity across managers, institutions, and wealth platforms, paving the way for the next generation of private-market infrastructure.

Hajdukovic described the Apex partnership as “very important” because LSEG builds resilient infrastructure at scale, and both firms think the private funds industry is ripe for change. In addition to improving the process for onboarding fund investors, DMI will allow investors to trade amongst themselves later this year.

“We will be talking to  the thousands of funds about hopefully onboarding them onto this primary and secondary platform,” he added. “A lot of funds are interested in joining and the pipeline is growing.”

The initial launch involved closed-end private funds but the platform has already added evergreen funds.

“We will be looking at all the types of funds that can go onto our platform and towards a secondary trading solution,” said Hajdukovic.

Growth

Firms expect a material amount of money markets, private and alternative investments, equities, and mutual funds and ETFs to be tokenized within the next five years, according to this year’s Broadridge Digital Transformation & Next-Gen Technology Study.

“Based on current activity in these markets, however, these ambitious estimates may be too conservative,” said the report. “While cybersecurity and potential valuation risks are still top of mind among market participants, changes are happening quickly that are rewriting the conventional financial services playbook in real time.”

However almost half of 947 respondents in the survey, 43%, also said they will need to build an entirely new tech stack in order to thrive in the age of AI. Hajdukovic said LSEG is not waiting for firms to update their technology, but instead, DMI is interoperable with traditional technology used by clients and with any blockchain that they want to use, provided that it is secure and resilient.

“We will be thinking about how to apply DLT at scale so people do not have to change everything they are doing,” he added.

Hajdukovic also highlighted that technology built by LSGE for DMI can be used for other asset classes. For example, in November last year LSEG used the same technology to issue tokenized bonds. He noted hat LSEG transfers ownership of an asset, whether that is a share, bond or private fund, and DLT is a perfect fit across asset classes for this process.

In November last year LSEG said in a statement that it will build an onchain settlement capability, the LSEG Digital Securities Depository (DSD).

“The beauty of DSD is that it gives our clients the ability achieve onchain settlement finality as the register on DLT becomes the official, legal ownership of a security,” he added. “That is very important in a digitally native world.”

DSD will be fully interoperable, connect traditional and digital markets, support multiple chains, and provide seamless interaction between existing settlement platforms and emerging digital infrastructures. Hajdukovic said: “The DSD will cater for digitally native securities and existing traditional finance securities. We have some very innovative solutions coming.”

In the U.S. the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation the central post-trade market infrastructure, has partnered with Canton Network to enable the tokenization of DTC-custodied assets on the blockchain. In addition, Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange have applied for regulatory approval to allow investors to trade tokenized stocks on their exchanges.

The Broadridge survey found that 54% of firms are making moderate to large investments in tokenization and digital asset infrastructure, and 53% believe blockchain and DLT will have a dramatic effect on the way assets are settled.

“Perhaps even more importantly, 55% of firms believe these technologies will create new opportunities across capital markets,” said Broadridge. “With adoption and investment rising fast, the stage is rapidly being set for a financial marketplace in which firms will need to travel parallel paths and consistently bridge the gap between traditional asset classes

and trade and settlement functions and new digital workflows.”