Ondo and Broadridge Bring Full Voting Rights to Holders of 250 Tokenised US Securities

An important word in the tokenisation story this week was not price or listing. It was voting.

On 2 July, Ondo Finance and Broadridge Financial Solutions launched what they describe as the first live, third party tokenised US securities operating fully within the existing regulatory perimeter, and they wired real shareholder governance into them from day one.

Holders of these tokens can vote their shares.

That sounds like a back office detail. It is closer to the centre of the whole argument for tokenised equity than any headline about market size.

What was launched

Ondo, a company building institutional grade finance onchain, went live with the first production deployments of a tokenised model covering third party securities that stay inside US rules rather than routing around them. The opening assets are a tokenised version of BlackRock's iShares Core S&P 500 ETF and tokenised Micron stock. Crucially, Ondo partnered with Broadridge, the incumbent that already runs proxy voting and investor communications for much of Wall Street, to extend those same governance rights to token holders across more than 250 tokenised securities.

Through Broadridge, holders of Ondo's tokens get proxy voting, issuer communications and regulatory disclosures, the full set of rights a conventional shareholder expects. The point the two firms are making is that tokenisation does not have to strip an investor of the rights that come with owning a share. Those rights can travel with the token.

Why governance is the real unlock

Early tokenised equity often gave holders economic exposure but quietly dropped everything else. You might track the price of a share without being able to vote it, receive company communications, or exercise the rights that make ownership more than a bet. For retail speculation that gap did not matter much. For serious capital, and for any founder who wants tokenised shares to be taken seriously by institutions, it matters enormously.

By plugging tokenised securities into the same proxy and disclosure rails that govern ordinary shares, Ondo and Broadridge are trying to make an onchain share indistinguishable, in the eyes of the law and the investor, from a paper one. Ownership onchain becomes full ownership, not a lesser cousin.

The UK read across

British founders and their advisers should watch the governance layer, not the tickers. The editorial question that runs through tokenised equity is not only whether it is cheaper or faster to issue, but who holds power in a capitalised company. Voting rights, board influence and information are power. A tokenised share that carries no vote hands the upside to holders while keeping control elsewhere. A tokenised share that carries a full vote, communications and disclosure keeps the ownership intact and simply changes the rails it runs on.

That is the model the UK will need if tokenised equity is to serve founders and long term investors rather than short term traders. The Digital Securities Sandbox and the PISCES venues for private company shares will each have to answer the same question Broadridge is answering here, namely how a holder of a tokenised private share actually exercises the rights that come with it. This week gives one working template.

Key takeaways

• Ondo and Broadridge launched the first live third party tokenised US securities operating inside existing US rules, starting with a tokenised BlackRock S&P 500 ETF and Micron stock.

• Broadridge extends full proxy voting, issuer communications and disclosures to holders across more than 250 tokenised securities.

• The move closes the governance gap that has made tokenised equity look like exposure rather than true ownership.

• For UK markets, the lesson is that tokenised shares must carry the rights of real shares, the question the DSS and PISCES venues will also have to solve.

Sources: PR Newswire, Ondo Finance, Broadridge.