Morgan Stanley has plans to drop out of the blockchain consortium R3 and revealed that it has no plans to invest in a $150 million equity funding round meant to speed the technology’s development, WSJ reports.
R3 saw Goldman Sachs, which was one of the founding members of the consortium, and Santander, opting out of the group recently. Morgan Stanley is the latest bank to retreat from R3. Santander and Goldman Sachs have invested in Digital Asset Holdings LLC, which is a startup supporting Hyperledger open-source blockchain platform. The blockchain consortium has approached over 42 banks that are its members, to invest in an equity funding round that seeks to raise $150 million over the next 9 to 12 months, a person familiar with R3’s plans told WSJ.
In the funding round, companies can choose to buy an equity stake, renew memberships or walk away from the consortium. The banks, which have decided not to take part in the funding round, can still remain members of the consortium, helping in blockchain development and sharing research. The participating banks of the consortium would take a 60% ownership stake in R3, while eight founding executives would retain 40%, in case R3 succeeds in raising $150 million.
Other early members of R3 – Bank of America Corp., Barclays PLC, and UBS Group AG – continue to become a part of the consortium, although they did not reveal their plans to take an equity stake. “State Street Corp. is an active participant in discussions around the future of the R3 consortium. We are evaluating a variety of models,” a spokeswoman from the bank said.
