Clearstream and Euronext deepen interoperability as Seturion poses a tokenised solution to the fragmented post-trade infrastructure of Europe

• Deepening inter-operability between Euronext and Clearstream can be read as a solution to the fragmentation of European post-trade infrastructure

• Börse Stuttgart has positioned its Seturion tokenised settlement platform as an alternative to the reconfiguration of the existing post-trade infrastructure

• Clearstream has hedged its exposure to a tokenised future by simultaneously placing a series of bets on the growth of digital asset markets

When Börse Stuttgart launched Seturion, its blockchain-based, pan-European settlement platform for tokenised assets, the group CEO positioned the new service squarely within the context of the fragmented post-trade infrastructure of the European capital markets.

"Seturion is the first digital pan-European settlement platform for tokenised assets,” said Dr. Matthias Voelkel, CEO of Boerse Stuttgart Group, when he announced Seturion in September 2025. “With a truly open architecture, we want to overcome current national settlement infrastructure silos and turn a unified European capital market into reality. So we designed Seturion as an industry solution: It is open to all market participants, and we are looking forward to building and scaling Seturion together with them.”

It was a commendably bold statement, positioning tokenisation as the solution to one of the principal obstacles to a single European capital market: a seemingly ineradicable infrastructural fragmentation that raises the cost of capital, makes it difficult and expensive to move money and collateral between jurisdictions and hampers the distribution and exchange of securities and funds across national borders in Europe.

By the time Voelkel spoke, Börse Stuttgart had already tested the Seturion Settlement Solution in secondary market trades with DZ BANK, Deutsche Bank, LBBW, Bankhaus Metzler and V-Bank as part of the trials orchestrated by the European Central Bank (ECB) between May and November 2024 to test settlement on blockchain networks.

Seturion – which is already being used by BX Digital, the regulated blockchain trading facility Börse Stuttgart owns in Switzerland – is open to any bank, broker or trading platform in Europe that needs to settle transactions in tokenised assets. Transaction costs savings of up to 90 per cent are promised.

That 90 per cent is a measure of the cost of infrastructural fragmentation in Europe.

The central securities depositories (CSDs) and central counterparty clearing houses (CCPs) that make up the European post-trade market infrastructure have faced criticism for raising the cost of capital in Europe for 25 years.

Their collective failure to contribute to building a single European capital market capable of providing a competitive alternative to the deep, liquid and low-cost capital market of the United States was the target of a pointed speech to the European Banking Congress in Frankfurt on 17 November 2023 by European Central Bank (ECB) president Christine Lagarde.

In it, Lagarde urged the financial market infrastructures (FMIs) of Europe to make a “Kantian shift.”

She pointed out that “despite two European Commission action plans, Europe’s capital market remains fragmented,” that “financial integration is lower than before the [2007-09] financial crisis” and that an equity market half the size of the United States had 20 times as many post-trade market infrastructures.

“A truly European capital market needs consolidated market infrastructures,” Lagarde concluded. “And this is where the private sector can show its determination.”

Two FMIs which seem to have got the message are Clearstream and Euronext.

Today, Clearstream announced that Euronext had designated the German domestic CSD, Clearstream Europe AG (CEU), as an alternative CSD for equities and Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) listed on the seven Euronext exchanges in Amsterdam (Euronext Amsterdam), Brussels (Euronext Brussels, Euronext Access Brussels and Euronext Growth Brussels) and Paris (Euronext Paris, Euronext Access Paris and Euronext Growth Paris).

Clearstream also says it has informed clients that it has asked the Euronext markets in Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels to allow Clearstream Banking S.A. (CBL) - its international central securities depository (ICSD) based in Luxembourg - to become an alternative CSD for the settlement of trades in ETPs, bonds and warrants that currently settle in Euroclear Bank only.

These are interesting moves because, although Euroclear sold its 3 per cent stake in Euronext in March 2024, Euronext continues to hold an equity stake in Euroclear.

Euronext has also built its own CSD, Euronext Securities, out of the CSDs it has acquired in Denmark (VP Securities was acquired in 2020), Italy (acquired as part of the acquisition of Borsa Italiana Group from London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) in April 2021), Norway (Oslo Børs VPS was acquired in June 2019), Portugal (Interbolsa was acquired as part of the purchase of the Lisbon stock exchange in 2002) and Greece (acquired as part of the purchase of the Athens Stock Exchange in 2025) to settle trades, initially on the Euronext exchanges in Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris.

Euronext Securities has assets under custody (AuC) worth more than €7 trillion.

It follows that an interoperability agreement between the German CSD (which has more than €20 trillion in AuC) and the Euronext CSDs could advance considerably the agenda outlined by Christine Lagarde in November 2023.

It is significant that, on 26 September last year, the German CSD changed its name from Clearstream Banking AG to Clearstream Europe AG to emphasise its new, pan-European strategic ambitions.

Indeed, Clearstream Europe and Clearstream Banking Luxembourg add that they will continue to collaborate closely with competitors on European clearing as well. That means working with the Swiss CCP owned by the Swiss stock exchange (SIX x-clear) and the Amsterdam-based CCP owned by CBOE (CBOE Clear) since July 2020, as well as Euronext Clearing CCP.

In June last year Clearstream became tri-party agent for Euronext Clearing, selecting, valuing and substituting collateral posted to the CCP by users, as well as settling the transactions and safekeeping the assets. The service, which started in November 2025, has an obvious objective: the provision of a pan-European collateral management service.

Sam Riley, CEO at Clearstream Securities Services, said at the time that “this collaboration reflects our commitment to building a stronger and more accessible European capital market that is well-equipped to navigate the complexities of the financial landscape of today and tomorrow.”

As the Clearstream partnership indicates, Euronext is also positioning itself to exploit the appetite for pan-European collateral management services.

It clears repo transactions through its Euronext Clearing CCP. Euronext also owns the MTS government bond repo trading platform, which covers the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Irish, French, German, Dutch, Belgian, Austrian and Finnish government bond markets, and is looking to expand its services to all major sovereign and supranational debt markets. Euronext has formed a partnership with Euroclear as well as Clearstream to supply tri-party collateral management services to its customers.

But Euronext and Clearstream have been working together on a variety of fronts for quite a while.

As long ago as March 2022 they announced a partnership which enables Clearstream clients to access post-trade services in the Danish market via the German domestic CSD through a direct link with the Euronext-owned CSD in Copenhagen.

Although Euronext does not own Nasdaq Copenhagen its ownership of the CSD means it provides issuance, settlement and safekeeping serves to users of the Copenhagen exchange.

Direct connections between CSDs in Europe have a long history, and the TARGET2-Securities (T2S) settlement system operated by the ECB in theory makes them relatively simple to operate, but they tend to be under-used.

The European Central Securities Depositories Association (ECSDA) publishes a matrix of links between its members and CSDs. Last updated in 2021, the matrix identifies 265 links between ECSDA members. But when it reviewed the links in 2016, it found nearly half were used infrequently or not at all.

Nevertheless, Clearstream and Euronext are responding to the challenge set by Christine Lagarde, by inter-operation if not by consolidation. Indeed, both Euronext Securities and Clearstream Europe are pursuing strategies that aim clearly at overcoming post-trade infrastructural fragmentation.

Whether they are moving fast enough to meet the challenge set by Seturion will be determined by the pace at which securities are tokenised, though connecting to Ethereum and Solana is an obvious extension of the present strategy.

Clearstream has a hedge. Tokenisation is a field in which it is investing more aggressively than most European FMIs. It has owned a stake in 360X - the blockchain-based art and real estate platform - since 2021 and can date its interest in security tokenisation back to the same year.

The D7 digital asset issuance platform, first opened by Clearstream in October 2021, has digitised the issuance process for the vast German domestic market in structured products. Clearstream says it hosts around €58 billion in natively issued digital securities.

Funds have emerged as an early candidate for tokenisation, and Clearstream Fund Services is offering order routing, transfer agency and custody to asset managers, partly via the Funds DLT acquisition announced in August 2023 and completed in January 2024. Clearstream has a private markets funds service on blockchain already.

Parent company Deutsche Börse lists 16 cryptocurrency ETNs and can add Stablecoins easily. It has integrated the Deutsche Börse Digital Exchange (DBDX) cryptocurrency trading platform launched in March 2024 into its 360T FX trading platform, which now incorporates a regulated “crypto-asset” trading platform for institutional investors.

Deutsche Börse also bought the regulated Swiss digital securities firm Crypto Finance AG in June 2021. It became the foundation of the Clearstream digital asset custody service. Clearstream has provided a cryptocurrency custody service for institutional investors since March 2025, by using Crypto Finance AG as a sub-custodian.

Euronext is a less conspicuous force in digital assets, though it took a 23.5 per cent stake in Tokeny early, in July 2019. Tokeny is now majority owned by Apex, which will assume 100 per cent ownership by 2028, and Euronext management has made a virtue of a wait-and-see policy on digital assets.

However, Euronext will not have failed to notice that other exchanges – LSEG, Nasdaq and NYSE – have built or are building tokenisation platforms. As it happens, the unusual focus at Euronext on attracting retail flows in its traditional business could prove a competitive advantage if tokenisation gathers momentum.