Swiss Lawyer | FDI, Fintech Licensing & Bank M&A | Author of the “What Nobody Tells You” series | Guest Lecturer, Columnist & TV Commentator
I’m not the one who checks every line. I’m the one who sees the angle nobody else saw, and asks the question that stops everyone going round in circles.
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 qualified as a lawyer 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 nine books in two series: What Nobody Tells You, seven books (investing abroad, buying property abroad, buying a bank, investing in crypto, buying or selling a business, the Swiss SRO, the plumbing of crypto) and How to Safely Buy Real Estate in Thailand, third edition in two volumes. The Bangkok Post called me “the real-estate veteran” and the Herald Sun in Australia a “real estate finance expert and author”, and my book on buying property in Thailand was nominated for a USA Book News award. See all the books.
Where it all started: Bangkok, 2009, and the launch of my first book, How to Purchase Real Estate Offshore Safely: The Case of Thailand.
Media and teaching
The Thai press was already quoting me in 2008. On 5 September 2008, Post Today, the Thai business daily, reported on the free test my firm, Rene Philippe & Partners, had published so that property buyers could check a developer before paying: “ออกคู่มือฟรี แนะนำซื้อบ้านไม่ได้บ้าน” (A free guide for buyers who pay and never get their home). On 3 March 2009, MGR Online (ผู้จัดการออนไลน์) quoted me as a real estate legal adviser: the 2008 global crisis would hold back foreign buyers more than the 1997 crisis had, because this time every country was hit (“จับตาNPLอสังหาฯพุ่ง ผู้ประกอบการร้อนเงินเร่ขายลด 30%”: property bad loans soar, cash-strapped developers cut prices by 30%). On 21 May 2009, The Nation reviewed my first book, How to Purchase Real Estate Offshore Safely: The Case of Thailand, in its business pages under the headline “Best guidelines to help weather the storm”, singling out my Developers Test as a particularly useful tool for buyers. In Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post quoted me on 8 May 2013 in “Tropical dream”, an article on investing in Thai property: many foreign buyers believe they can get around the law when they buy land. In 2014, the Asian Journal of Literature, Culture and Society (Assumption University, Bangkok) quoted my writing on Thai culture in “Detecting Thainess”, an academic paper by Tom Hoy: “You can learn Thai language but you cannot learn Thainess, it is instinctive.”
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). Between 2012 and 2015 I wrote six 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”), valuing property abroad (“Évaluer l’immobilier à l’étranger”) and, in two parts, the traps of investing in Thailand and China (“L’investissement le plus sensible”). I have taught at master’s level at the Asian Institute of Technology and Mahidol University in Thailand.
In November 2026 I wrote for the Regulatory Watch section of FinanceX Magazine (edition 29): “Three Shifts Reshaping Crypto Custody in Switzerland”, on FINMA’s new guidance on crypto custody, staking, and the new crypto licence proposed by the Federal Council. On 9 November 2026, Le Temps, the Swiss daily, quoted me on the Binance hack and the little-known power to freeze stolen crypto remotely, in “Des milliards volés, puis gelés à distance”.
Contact
insight@fintechlex.com · WhatsApp +41 787 983 770 · YouTube · LinkedIn
