Ledgy announces nominee partnership with ZEDRA to build for the public markets

Ledgy, Europe’s leading equity and share plan management software, has partnered with ZEDRA, a global specialist in Active Wealth, Corporate & Global Expansion, Fund Solutions and Pensions & Incentives, to develop a faster, more convenient share settlement service for public companies. The agreement is part of a drive by Ledgy to expand its services for public companies, in addition to the private markets.

ZEDRA, through its experienced Incentives team based in Guernsey, will serve as the corporate sponsored nominee (CSN) for companies running share settlements (the legal transfer of the ownership of a share from one party to another) through Ledgy. CSNs ‘hold’ shares on behalf of share scheme participants, reducing the administrative burden on publicly listed companies by pooling the holdings of, for example, groups of employees into one legal account.

Focusing on the public markets

CEO Yoko Spirig announced Ledgy’s focus on the public markets in a blog post published in June. Ledgy, which serves thousands of companies in over 45 countries from offices in London, Zurich and Berlin, has already closed deals with publicly listed customers.

Building on the ZEDRA partnership, Ledgy’s product development roadmap includes automating essential workflows for public companies, such as directly integrating brokers and paying agents, covering additional advanced financial reporting use cases, or preventing insider trading.

Building for the future

Yoko said: “Our partnership with ZEDRA is a crucial step on our journey to reinvent the end-to-end share settlement process for public companies.

“Our work continues at pace to build more infrastructure around the needs of listed businesses. Public companies invariably have to rely on decades-old technology and highly manual processes for vital tasks like share settlements. We think we can speed up core processes for these companies by building truly end-to-end solutions with best-in-class technologies.

“We are actively integrating brokers and paying agents that allow us to deliver a best-in-class settlement process for a sector that has not seen the same pace of innovation as the private markets in recent years. We are excited to develop much further with ZEDRA in the months and years ahead.”

Niki Brown, Client Director and Head of Incentives at ZEDRA, said: “We’re very excited to add Ledgy to our suite of software and service partners. There is a huge opportunity to offer companies smarter, more accurate settlement processes, wherever they are listed.

“Implementing share plans in global companies is notoriously complex, and we think our integrated approach to nominee services has the potential to make life significantly easier for share plan managers and cross-functional teams in these businesses.

“We look forward to working alongside Yoko and the team to offer a differentiated solution for companies looking to level up share plan management.”

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