Bullish and Equiniti launch Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition to set standards for tokenized securities

Two companies that just agreed to merge are already working on shaping the broader industry they want to operate in. Bullish, the institutional digital asset exchange, and Equiniti, one of the world’s largest transfer agents, have launched the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition, an initiative focused on building standards, infrastructure, and legal frameworks for tokenized securities.

The timing is deliberate. Bullish announced a definitive agreement to acquire Equiniti in a $4.2B transaction on May 5, 2026, and the coalition is a direct extension of the strategic logic behind that deal.

What the coalition is actually trying to solve

Tokenizing a security is relatively straightforward in a technical sense. The harder problem is preserving everything that comes with owning a share: voting rights, dividend entitlements, regulatory protections, and the ability to participate in corporate actions.

The Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition is specifically designed to address that gap. By centering the model on the issuer rather than the exchange or the custodian, the coalition is trying to build a structure where tokenized shares carry the same legal weight as their paper-and-ledger equivalents.

Equiniti brings the institutional credibility to make that argument stick. The firm has nearly 3,000 issuer clients and more than 20 million verified shareholders, processing roughly $500B in annual payments. Its issuer relationships average 18 years in length.

The $4.2B deal sitting behind the coalition

The acquisition that frames this coalition is one of the more structurally interesting deals in recent financial history. Bullish is paying $4.2B for Equiniti, with $1.85B in assumed debt and approximately $2.35B in restricted Bullish stock priced at $38.48 per share.

Bullish is already publicly listed, trading under the ticker BLSH on its own Gibraltar exchange, where it also tokenized its shares as a proof-of-concept for exactly the kind of infrastructure the coalition intends to standardize.

The combined entity is projecting approximately $1.3B in adjusted revenue for 2026, with adjusted EBITDA less capital expenditures exceeding $500M. The deal is expected to close in January 2027, pending regulatory approvals in both the US and UK.

Equiniti operates across both markets, which matters. One of the persistent frustrations with tokenized securities has been regulatory fragmentation. Equiniti’s existing regulatory footprint in both jurisdictions gives the coalition a realistic path toward standards that could actually travel across borders.

Why this matters beyond Bullish and Equiniti

Capital markets run on standards. Tokenized securities currently lack the interoperability agreements, settlement standards, and legal frameworks that allow traditional cross-border share transactions, which is why institutional adoption has lagged well behind the technical capability to tokenize almost anything.

Equiniti’s client roster, which includes nearly 3,000 issuers with long-term relationships, provides a distribution mechanism for whatever frameworks the coalition produces. The projected 6-8% annual revenue growth through 2029 for the combined entity is a financial thesis about that head start materializing.

The regulatory dimension will be the real test. Tokenized securities that genuinely preserve shareholder rights require cooperation from regulators, exchanges, and legal systems that were not designed with blockchain settlement in mind. Getting the SEC, the FCA, and the dozens of other bodies with jurisdiction over capital markets to align around a new framework is a different category of challenge entirely.