Reto Luthiger

MLL Meyerlustenberger Lachenal Froriep AG

Zurich www.mll-legal.com

reto.luthiger@mll-legal.com Tel: +41 58 552 01 92

Biography

Reto Luthiger joined MLL Legal in 2010, is a counsel and a co-head of the firm’s regulatory, fintech and DLT practice group. Before joining MLL Legal, he worked in the enforcement division with the Swiss regulator FINMA. Reto acts as CEO of the Self-Regulatory Organization of Swiss Association of Investment Companies (SRO SAIC) and is in the BoD of SR Saphirstein AG having a fintech licence. Reto has a PhD in AML.

After finishing my studies in law and economics at University of St. Gallen, I got the unique chance of working with the enforcement division of the Swiss regulator FINMA. It was there where I discovered my passion for financial market regulations. Afterwards, I joined MLL Legal, a leading business law firm in Zurich as a junior associate. After passing the Zurich Bar exams, I continued working with MLL Legal as an associate parttime and wrote at the same time my PhD-thesis about antimoney laundering for investment companies. Later, I got promoted to counsel with MLL Legal and today I am co-heading our regulatory, fintech and DLT practice group.

What attracted you to a career in fintech?

Fintech is an interesting combination of legal skills and understanding technologies and many different business models mostly in the start-up phase of companies. It challenges not only the existing financial institutions but also the established legal thinking and methods. Finally, being a fintech adviser is more than giving legal advice only.

What do you enjoy most about working in fintech and blockchain?

Fintech lies at the intersection of my passion in financial market regulations and many other legal fields and cannot be advised on without affection for technology, data and economics combined with a deep understanding of business models. Further, this complexity also evolves in a very fast velocity and requires intensive continuous learning. Finally, blockchain challenges your own thinking patterns and asks for creatively rethinking and assembling of "old" legal instruments for new models. Almost every day, there is a tough, but fascinating new challenge.

What areas of fintech have you noticed produce an uptick in your work recently?

We noticed increased demand for tokenisation of financial instruments based on structured products as tracker certificates and ledger-based securities. Further the real-world linking of DAOs to Swiss associations as well as NFT- and metaverseprojects are still popular. We see payment services maturing, from pure national models to easier and faster cross-border payment models being further expanded with numerous additional services in order to make them (more) profitable. Finally, major crypto exchanges are looking to get a foot into Europe and Switzerland.

What opportunities and challenges are presented to investors in cryptocurrency and other digital assets?

On the one hand, regulations get more intense globally, on the other hand, the EU is opening a big uniform market with the introduction of the Markets in CryptoAssets (MiCA) regulation next year. Further, institutional investors and more and more classic financial institutions enter the digital assets markets, which will lead to much bigger trading volumes and liquidity and finally lead to security tokens finally establishing themselves in the market together with the required regulated financial market infrastructures. The biggest challenge for regulators is and will be decentralised finance because this will require the development of completely new regulatory approaches.

In which direction would you like to steer your practice over the next five years?

MLL Legal's fintech practice will continue to offer an integrated approach over all legal fields and competences, in particular regulatory, technology, intellectual property, data, contractual and companies' law as well as tax. We will selectively expand our practice to specific areas in EU law, which can be served in an isolated way also from Switzerland and where we feel comfortable, such as EU-prospectus regulations and MiCA-regulations. Finally, we will strengthen in particular our deep understanding of technology, business models and interdisciplinary and complex challenges.

How does MLL Meyerlustenberger Lachenal Froriep distinguish itself from its competitors in the market?

Starting in the leadership team consisting of complementary strengths with Kilian Schärli coming from the IP/life sciences and notary public area, Ronald Kogens from technology law and myself from financial market regulations and culminating in our integrated approach of working closely together with the tax, data privacy and ecommerce, corporate, employment and immigration, litigation and IP-departments, we deliver a unique competence out of one hand for our clients.

What advice would you give to someone starting out in fintech?

Be open to constantly develop your knowhow and skills, have an intrinsic interest in technologies and a natural flair for understanding business models. Work broad but do not hesitate to seek cooperation with other knowledgeable colleagues because it is natural to not know everything by yourself in such a complex field. Finally, you are more than a legal adviser only to your client, you are also a sparring partner, network and ecosystem access point, and business developer.

WWL says: Reto Luthiger receives heaps of praise not only for his “ability to highlight risk in an understandable way”, but also for “his excellent handling of complex and sensitive matters” in the fintech space.