Bullish acquires Equiniti for $4.2 billion: Crypto exchange buys traditional securities listing and portfolio tokenization infrastructure

Crypto exchange Bullish (NYSE: BLSH) announced on May 5 that it has reached a final agreement with private equity firm Siris Capital to acquire UK legacy transfer agent Equiniti for $4.2 billion, combining “crypto exchange” with “traditional securities registration,” with the goal of building a “global tokenized securities transfer agent.” CNBC reported that Equiniti currently provides registration and shareholder services for more than 2,500 listed companies and 20 million shareholders, with an annual processing value of approximately $500 billion. This deal is the largest traditional financial infrastructure acquisition in the crypto industry in recent years, and settlement is expected to be completed in January 2027.

Deal structure: $1.85 billion to assume debt + $2.35 billion in Bullish stock

The $4.2 billion transaction is composed of:

$1.85 billion—assumption of Equiniti’s existing debt

$2.35 billion—Bullish stock consideration, based on Bullish’s 30-day VWAP (volume-weighted average price) prior to the close on May 4, at $38.48 per share

Seller Siris Capital is a private equity firm that took Equiniti private from the London Stock Exchange in 2021. Equiniti’s leadership team and CEO Dan Kramer will remain, continuing to be responsible for day-to-day operations, compliance obligations, and client relationships.

Post-integration scale: $1.3 billion in revenue, $0.5 billion EBITDA, 2,500-company shareholder registration

After the merger, Bullish expects to reach approximately $1.3 billion in adjusted total revenue in 2026, $0.5 billion or more in adjusted EBITDA (excluding capital expenditures), and a 6–8% compound annual revenue growth rate in 2027–2029, including tokenization and blockchain services growth of 20%.

Bullish’s core assets brought in by Equiniti:

Shareholder registration and transfer services for 2,500+ listed companies

A customer base of 20 million shareholders

Payment business with annual processing value of approximately $500 billion

Compliance operating licenses across the UK, the US, and Europe

For Bullish, acquiring Equiniti is equivalent to “not having to build tokenization infrastructure from scratch”—it will directly take over existing securities registration relationships for 2,500 companies, then move those shareholder records “on-chain” over time to become tokenized securities. This “acquire infrastructure first, then put it on-chain” path is the most direct expansion model for crypto companies in the US capital markets after an IPO.

Industry significance: the first year of tokenization M&A, intersecting with DTCC and Canton routes

This deal occurs at a time when “tokenized infrastructure M&A” is clearly heating up in 2026. The relevant points before and after:

December 2025—DTCC and Digital Asset cooperate, plan to tokenize US Treasuries held at DTC via the Canton Network, entering a controlled production environment in H1 2026

April 2026—FINRA approves Securitize to underwrite and custody tokenized IPOs

May 2026—Kresus joins the Canton ecosystem, partnering with Korean Hanwha Securities on a tokenization platform for assets in the private market

May 2026 (this deal)—Bullish acquires Equiniti, combining a transfer agent with tokenized trading

A common thread across these four items is “pushing tokenization from ‘new issuance’ to ‘on-chaining existing assets’”—not only creating new tokenized products, but gradually moving trillions of dollars of already existing shareholder registrations, bond, and securities-related businesses onto the chain. Bullish’s acquisition of Equiniti is the largest single deal so far on this route, and it also marks a clear acceleration of the model in which crypto-native companies directly buy traditional financial infrastructure.

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