I’m Rene Philippe Raymond Dubout, and I write everything you read on FintechLex.
I studied law at the University of Geneva, graduated in 1988 and obtained my lawyer’s licence in Geneva in 1990: I have been a licensed Swiss lawyer ever since. In 1995 I left Geneva for Asia, with no job, no client and no network. I have spent the thirty years since working on cross-border deals between Asia, Europe and Switzerland: market entry, joint ventures, licences, and the purchase and sale of regulated financial businesses.
In Bangkok I founded a law firm, a fiduciary and a consulting company. I worked on projects in Myanmar and Cambodia, from telecoms to a wine estate near Inle Lake. Back in Europe, I moved into financial regulation: Swiss SRO structures and FINMA, payment and e-money companies, bank acquisitions, crypto clients. Along the way I helped clients obtain two banking licences.
I have had to start again three times: when I left for Asia, when I came back to Switzerland in 2013, and after Covid shut down a business whose clients were almost all abroad. Some projects worked, others failed. I write about both, because the mistakes are usually the more useful part.
What I write about
Swiss SROs and FINMA licences; buying and selling banks, payment institutions and other regulated companies; crypto and stablecoins; investing, setting up and buying property abroad.
Books
I am the author of eight books in two series: What Nobody Tells You (investing abroad, buying property abroad, buying a bank, investing in crypto, buying or selling a business, the Swiss SRO) and How to Safely Buy Real Estate in Thailand, third edition in two volumes. The Bangkok Post called me “the real-estate veteran”. See all the books.
Media and teaching
I appeared more than twenty times as an outside expert on Dukascopy TV between 2014 and 2018 (the interviews can still be watched on my YouTube channel), and wrote four articles for L’Agefi, the Swiss financial daily, on FINMA’s client-identification rules (“Des procédures lourdes et surannées”), the dollar and banking secrecy (“Dollar incompatible avec le secret bancaire”), investing in Myanmar (“Pourquoi investir au Myanmar”) and valuing property abroad (“Évaluer l’immobilier à l’étranger”). I have taught at master’s level at the Asian Institute of Technology and Mahidol University in Thailand.
Contact
insight@fintechlex.com · WhatsApp +41 787 983 770 · YouTube · LinkedIn
