Apex Group Joins Hedera Council, Which Oversees a Network Serving Assets Worth More Than $3.5 Trillion
Key Facts
Hedera Council announced on November 11, 2026, that Apex Group, which provides services for assets worth more than $3.5 trillion, had joined its membership, giving the fund services company a role in governing the distributed ledger network. The council said Apex would explore opportunities to use the network as part of its broader digital-asset and asset-tokenization initiatives. The announcement did not include the launch of a product or specific project on Hedera, leaving the proposed use at the exploratory stage. Hedera Council Chairman Mance Harmon said the company’s addition “strengthens the council at a pivotal moment, as institutional asset tokenization moves from experimentation to real-world adoption.” The announcement places a major asset services provider within the body overseeing the network’s direction.
Council membership gives Apex a role in decisions concerning the network and treasury, including topics such as network pricing, software updates and treasury transfers. According to the council’s FAQ, members vote on a one-member, one-vote basis, and decisions are generally made by majority approval, subject to exceptions set out in the council agreement. Members are also expected to host a network node, and node operation and voting are restricted to council members. The council’s website says members have equal standing in determining the direction of Hedera’s software and services, while their discussions cover technical matters, pricing and security. Apex’s announcement did not specify a vote on any particular decision, but announced its membership in the existing governance framework.
Apex links its expansion in digital assets to tokenization services designed to meet regulatory requirements. Hedera’s announcement described the company as the first transfer agent and fund services provider to administer regulated securities using distributed ledger technology as the official record of ownership. Marco Infuso, Apex’s head of digital assets for Central Europe, said the principle supports the company’s use of the ERC-3643 standard, describing it as “the compliant tokenization standard.” Infuso linked this use to embedding compliance throughout an asset’s lifecycle. This outlines the approach the company says it follows in tokenization, without specifying how it will be applied on Hedera.
According to the announcement, Apex Digital 3.0 enables clients to launch, distribute, service and manage digital and tokenized assets within a single ecosystem. The solution’s capabilities include stablecoins, investor identity verification and proof of reserves. The company’s announcement described the offering as combining asset creation, management and servicing on one platform. In May 2025, Apex announced that it had acquired a majority stake in Tokeny, saying at the time that the initial investment and strategic partnership with the company had been announced in December 2023. It added that Tokeny’s solutions had been used to tokenize assets worth more than $32 billion as of that announcement, and that the company had developed the ERC-3643 standard.
Previously published trials provide institutional context for the use of Hedera in regulated markets. In July 2025, Lloyds, Aberdeen and Archax said tokenized units of a money market fund and UK government bonds had been used as collateral for foreign exchange transactions between Aberdeen and Lloyds over the network. Lloyds described the initiative as the first of its kind in the UK and said the tokens were issued, transferred and held through Archax on Hedera’s permissioned public network. Hedera later included the trial among the network’s applications in regulated markets. Separately, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Commissioner Hester Peirce said in July 2025 that tokenized securities remain securities and that federal securities laws continue to apply.
In the market, HBAR’s latest available daily close before the announcement was $0.06559 on November 10, 2026. That reading predates news of Apex’s membership and therefore does not reflect price action following the announcement. Hedera said in its 2025 review that the Canary HBAR fund began trading on Nasdaq on October 28, 2025. It also said the focus in 2026 would be on expanding projects and integrations launched in 2025. Apex’s announcement did not set a timeline for a project or integration on the network, while the council said the membership comes as institutional asset tokenization moves toward practical use.