The Swiss private bank is extending a year-old push into digital assets – including building up a trading desk.
Zurich-based Maerki Baumann is launching a crypto trading desk from June, it said in a statement on Friday. The 88-year-old wealth manager won permission from Swiss regulator Finma to trade and store cryptocurrencies and other tokens, a bid to build a bridge between traditional private banking and digital assets.
Maerki Baumann appointed Marcel Spalinger to run the desk, which includes senior private banker Roger Sharma as well asMilko Hensel, responsible for digital partnerships, and financial adviser Domenico Ansaldi. «With the trading and custody of digital assets, not only are we tapping into a new business area, we are also creating additional investment possibilities for our core business,» CEO Stefan Zwahlen
Corporate Accounts as Gateway
Spalinger and Sharma joined Maerki Baumann last autumn from Liechtenstein's Kaiser Partner. Last spring, Maerki Baumann began offering some crypto services, as finews.com reported, including chaperoning initial coin and security token offerings.
The push mirrors a similar effort by Falcon Private Bank, which foundered in its reinvention as a crypto lender following a major money laundering scandal, or Lugano-based Banca Zarattini, and Vontobel in Zurich. Zwahlen told finews.com that Maerki Baumann hopes for synergies for its wealth management arm from offering corporate accounts to digital and blockchain firms.
