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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.

Vietnam has kept distribution services, including retail business, open to foreign investors for years without any restriction. The only exception to this has been certain kinds of goods, such as rice, oil, medicines and cigarettes, which are monopolised by domestic enterprises, and the need for an application for the Economic Need Test (ENT) required for the opening of each individual retail shop by foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs).

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.

Another round of consolidation in the Iberian financial sector is expected in 2017. And, if only in terms of the semi-announced and widely discounted merger between Bankia and Banco Mare Nostrum (BMN), this new round does indeed seem likely. More broadly, the present map of institutions, with roughly 15 substantial financial groups (though with remarkable differences in size) is commonly acknowledged as an intermediate stage in the route towards a landscape that will be dominated probably by fewer than 10 groups.

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).

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).

The critical status of clearing houses in the derivatives market is protected by EU-level regulation. But the fact that no single solution has been chosen to tackle potential issues is causing concern.

Driss Bererhi Arne Kluewer

In the midst of the most ambitious concession programme in Colombian history (4G), the country is suffering a backlash from the most profound corruption scandal in the region.

On March 7 2017, the Brazilian federal government released the second phase of the Investment Partnership Programme (Programa de Parceria de Investimentos or PPI) – a governmental programme designed to foster infrastructure by expanding and strengthening the relationship between the government and the private sector.