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On November 23 2016, the Swiss Federal Council published its dispatch for a reform of Swiss corporate law. Along with the dispatch, a draft act amending the Swiss Code of Obligations was presented. The draft act seeks to modernise Swiss corporate law with a focus on increasing the flexibility of the provisions governing company formation and capital structure. Furthermore, it aims to modernise corporate governance by strengthening shareholder rights, and promoting gender diversity on corporate boards and senior management of listed companies. It also replaces the provisions of the (interim) Ordinance on Excessive Compensation (Minder-Ordinance) by a federal act of parliament with only a few changes. Depending on how parliament receives this project, we expect the draft act to enter into force as early as 2019.

The lighter side of the past month in the world of financial law

Amendments to the Payment Services Act and several related laws concerning virtual currencies are expected to come into effect after April 2017. In response to the amendments, the Financial Service Agency of Japan announced the draft of the Cabinet Office Ordinance concerning virtual currency exchange service providers on December 28 2016. The Ordinance sets forth the details of the rules for virtual currency exchange service providers (VCESP).

The revision of law 5/2011, which approved the smoking prevention and control bill, is still pending and, though a full smoking ban in casinos was the initial plan of the Macau government, it may not actually happen after all.

While US bond issuers would tend to favour flexibility in devising their covenant packages, investors can also fight back

As far as risk management goes, the term seems almost trivial when applied to Brexit. Getting past the first step – identifying potential hazards and how those scenarios might play out – is difficult. Brexit has no clear form or shape, no step-by-step plan to follow and very little in the way of a timeline, beyond those two years from article 50 being triggered that everyone keeps talking about.

Japanese bondholders have reacted strongly to the upcoming presidential elections in France. And if their behaviour on the debt financial markets is anything to go by, then France is headed for trouble. The country's investors have been buying a growing amount of offshore debt in the past year, driven out of their home nation by the bank of Japan's restrictive monetary policy and low – sometimes negative – fixed-rate returns on so-called JGBs. According to Bank of Japan data, they hold JPY 27 trillion ($240 billion) of French bonds, or roughly 11% of their portfolio. Only their US holdings are larger (JPY 122 trillion).

Hong Kong and Singapore are once again going head-to-head, vying for two of the year's most coveted initial public offerings (IPOs) – Alibaba-backed Ant Financial's $10 billion offering and Saudi Aramco's $100 billion deal.

The South African retailer's capital reorganisation was complicated by the existence of three tiers of debt, the company’s scale and its national importance

Banks and regulators have reacted impressively to fintech’s rise. Incoming rules and Brexit will challenge them further