Former NYSE Chief Stacey Cunningham Says Bullish Can Win Over Companies That Reject Tokenized Stocks

Stacey Cunningham, who ran the New York Stock Exchange from 2018 to 2022, started this week as Bullish’s president with a clear complaint: the companies whose shares get tokenized are rarely asked. Coindesk report that, She says plenty of tokenization today is synthetic and happens without issuer input. The reaction is already visible. As of Nov. 6, 56 of the 62 companies picked for the OKX and Intercontinental Exchange venue had objected, Apple, Amazon and Tesla among them.

Equiniti Deal Gives Bullish a Transfer Agent

Bullish plans to buy Equiniti for $4.2 billion, with closing expected in January 2027 pending regulatory approval. That would add nearly 3,000 corporate issuers and more than 20 million shareholders. Transfer agents keep the official record of who owns shares, a job that matters if tokenized stock is to carry the same legal and economic rights as the ordinary kind. Cunningham says Bullish would hold every piece: an exchange, a transfer agent, a custodian, an automated market maker and indices.

How Issuer-Sponsored Tokenization Differs From Other Models

Some products only track a share price and give no ownership rights. Others, like the planned OKX and ICE venue, protect shareholder rights but still let companies object when third parties tokenize their stock. Bullish wants to build relationships with companies before their shares are tokenized.

Bullish Tests the Model With Its Own Shares

Bullish tokenized its own stock on Solana earlier this year, and in October it showed the transfer of 61 million reserved tokenized shares, administered by Equiniti, at an event at the NYSE. It lists Solana, Ethereum and Aptos as supported networks. Persuading outside companies is the harder test.