Marcus Altenburg.

About Marcus

Marcus Altenburg has been Managing Partner of Goldblum and Partners since 2007, building the independent Swiss corporate, regulatory and fiduciary firm around financial regulation. Under his direction it made FINMA and SRO licensing, AML and the regulated-entity structures around them its main field from 2014, and it has been recognised by IFLR1000 across editions since 2015 — most recently in the 2026 Switzerland rankings for Corporate / M&A and Restructuring & Insolvency.

His work is the regulatory and corporate side of doing business in and from Switzerland: securing the right FINMA licence or SRO affiliation, building the substance and governance that make a Swiss structure hold up, and keeping it in good standing afterwards. He keeps the team small and senior, bringing in tax, audit and IP specialists for the matters that need them, and stays personally involved in the mandates he runs rather than handing them down. He is a lawyer admitted to the bar (Rechtsanwaltskammer Düsseldorf) and a member of the International Bar Association (IBA); he is certified in AML/CFT compliance by VQF and ARIF, the FINMA-recognised self-regulatory organisations, and completes the periodic VQF anti-money-laundering training required under Article 8 AMLA (most recently in June 2026). He also co-founded and ran Simplewealth AG, one of Switzerland’s first FINMA-regulated digital asset managers. ITR World Tax 2026 ranks him Highly Regarded for General Corporate Tax and among the Top 30 Swiss tax advisers. He works in English and German.

What he works on

• Financial regulation: FINMA authorisation, asset-manager and securities-firm licences, banking and FinTech, payment and crypto institutions;
• AML & SRO: SRO membership, AML frameworks, and the ongoing compliance that keeps a licence in good standing;
• Corporate & substance: company formation, holding and SPV structures, and the Swiss substance that supports them;
• Digital assets: token classification, stablecoin rulings and the DLT licensing regime.

How he writes

The guidance published under his name is written to be accurate first: it states where a rule does not apply, what the thresholds actually are, and when a structure is the wrong answer, not only when it is available. It reflects the firm’s position that good regulatory work is about getting the characterisation right before any application is filed, and being honest with a client about cost, timing and risk.

Get in touch

Marcus reviews enquiries on the work he leads personally. You can reach him through the firm at info@goldblum.ch or +41 44 515 25 90, connect on LinkedIn, or read more about the firm and the financial-regulation practice he leads.