Lazard announced on 17 August 2026 that it is expanding its Financial Advisory presence in the DACH region — Germany, Austria and Switzerland — and has appointed Dr. Marco Superina to lead investment banking for Switzerland. Superina will be based in Zurich and will advise Swiss and international corporations, entrepreneurs and financial sponsors on mergers and acquisitions, capital solutions and other strategic matters. He joins from UBS, where he was Head of Global Banking Switzerland.
The remit is specific: Superina leads investment banking for Switzerland. He has not been appointed chief executive or head of Lazard Switzerland, nor head of the DACH region, and the announcement should not be read that way.
New Zurich presence strengthens Swiss coverage
The Zurich base gives Lazard local senior coverage in a market it has historically served from elsewhere in Europe. Switzerland concentrates an unusual amount of cross-border corporate activity relative to its size, and advisory mandates there frequently involve multiple jurisdictions, listed and unlisted parties, and shareholder structures that are not typical of larger European markets.
Superina will form part of the DACH management team led by Marcus Schenck, Head of Financial Advisory for the DACH region at Lazard. The Swiss appointment therefore sits inside an existing regional structure rather than creating a separate country platform.
Superina joins from UBS
At UBS, Superina oversaw the bank's Swiss coverage and investment-banking activities as Head of Global Banking Switzerland. Before UBS he held senior roles at Credit Suisse, including Head of M&A Switzerland, Head of M&A Northern Europe and Head of Healthcare M&A for Europe. He began his career at Credit Suisse First Boston in 1997 and holds a doctorate in banking and finance from the University of Zurich.
That background is domestic coverage combined with sector and cross-border M&A leadership — the combination Lazard would need to compete for Swiss mandates against balance-sheet banks whose lending relationships are already in place.
Family-owned businesses central to the Swiss market
The most relevant feature of the Swiss market for a UKFOS readership is the depth of its founder- and family-owned corporate base. Switzerland hosts a significant number of internationally active companies that remain under founder or family control, and Lazard identified this constituency specifically when explaining the strategic importance of the market: Schenck's stated view is that Switzerland is attractive because it combines major international corporations with a substantial base of founder- and family-owned businesses.
The distinction to hold on to is that founder- and family-owned companies are not family offices. They are operating businesses under concentrated ownership. The connection to private wealth is sequential rather than simultaneous: succession, partial sale, recapitalisation or listing is often the event that converts operating ownership into investable liquidity, and the advisory relationship at that point precedes the family office that may follow it.
For advisers to founder-controlled groups, independent advisory firms carry a structural argument — the absence of lending, underwriting or principal-investing conflicts — that tends to matter most in exactly those transactions, where control, governance and family alignment are as material as price.
Lazard continues European expansion
The appointment forms part of Lazard's broader Financial Advisory growth strategy under Lazard 2030, the firm's stated plan for expanding its advisory business. Lazard is a financial advisory and asset-management firm; UKFOS makes no assessment of its competitive position, and the firm's own characterisation of its franchise is not adopted here.
Senior hiring across European advisory has been active as mid-cycle M&A recovers, with independent firms competing for coverage bankers who bring long-standing corporate and sponsor relationships. Whether that translates into mandate share is measurable only in completed transactions over several years, not in appointments. This is reported as market news and is not investment advice.
UKFOS editorial · published 25 August 2026