The WBF updated Annex 2 of the Sudan Sanctions Ordinance (SR 946.231.18) on 4 June, with the amendment taking effect at 23:00 that evening. The change is operational: names added, no new asset categories. The Sudan regime has a lower profile than Russia or Iran in most corporate compliance programmes, which is a risk in itself — the list turns over faster, and the civil-war dynamics mean the WBF moves without much advance signal. If your last Sudan screening ran before Thursday, rerun it. Our article today on Art. 9 EmbG covers what to do if a blocked asset is on your books.

Three business days remain before the FINMA partial revision of the GwV-FINMA closes on Tuesday, 9 June. The official line — "no new obligations" — is technically defensible and practically misleading. The three clauses on beneficial ownership transparency in complex holding structures do not create new duties; they determine who bears the burden of proof when a duty is contested in an enforcement situation. That is not a cosmetic change. We walked through the clauses on 16 May. Association submissions are already in; if your legal department or external counsel wants to weigh in, the window is still open — barely. Watch whether the industry manages to soften the ownership transparency clauses before Tuesday's deadline, or whether FINMA takes them through unchanged.

Servatius von Tatzenberg today on FINMA AM 04/2026 (supplement to Aufsichtsmitteilung 05/2023), which frames the risk analysis as a central instrument of strategic management. The article's argument: a risk analysis drafted for the board will read differently to the external Prüfer, and the supplement's new precision about what the document must cover closes the gap between those two audiences. If yours was written as a governance narrative rather than an operational mapping, that mismatch is now a compliance exposure.

Also today: the Art. 9 EmbG authorization pathway — how a SECO approval can reopen a frozen-asset transaction that otherwise looks closed. The practitioner literature tends to stop at the freeze; this fills the gap on the unfreeze mechanics. Pairs with our May 29 piece on why a freeze under the EmbG is not a forfeiture under Art. 26 BV, and directly relevant given today's Sudan update above.

K&L Gates is shuttering its Beijing office and offering severance to local staff — the latest step in a sustained US-firm retreat from mainland China that has accelerated through 2025 and into 2026. Hunton Andrews Kurth's own Beijing closure was announced earlier this year. The proximate causes are consistent across firms: PRC data-localization rules make cross-border due diligence materially harder for foreign-qualified lawyers; the geopolitical premium embedded in US client instructions has made China-office economics unworkable for firms below the very top tier.

For Swiss in-house counsel with Chinese JV partners, supply-chain exposure, or pending M&A: the pool of international firms able to give bilingual, China-side advice from a China office is contracting. The advice does not disappear — it migrates to Hong Kong, Singapore, or local Chinese firms — but the handoff brings a different privilege analysis and a different risk profile in contentious situations. Build the local relationship before you need it in a dispute.

The counterpoint is instructive. Pinsent Masons just formed a joint venture with a Chinese commercial law firm in Qianhai — betting that the JV structure is the durable way to hold China access under local licensing rules. The divergence between the US-led exodus and the UK-led deepening reflects different client bases and different geopolitical risk appetites. Watch which model is still standing in 2028.

Reed Smith follows Kirkland, Latham, and a dozen others into Saudi Arabia, drawn by Vision 2030 infrastructure, energy, and financial services transactions. For Swiss corporates considering Saudi market entry, the practical consequence is positive: the advisor ecosystem on the ground is now deep enough to support serious deal work. The compliance note has not changed, however. Saudi Arabia remains a high-risk jurisdiction for anti-bribery purposes regardless of the economic liberalization narrative. The tatbezug test under Art. 322septies StGB applies to dealings with foreign officials without a value threshold; if your Saudi market entry touches public procurement or government-linked entities — and most large Saudi projects do — that analysis belongs in the term sheet, not on the flight home.

A consortium of major international firms — Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader among them — has formed a Global Legal Tech Alliance to share investment in AI-assisted research, document review, and contract management. Note first: Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader have approved a $3.6 billion transatlantic merger going live 1 July 2026, making them a single conflict-check counterparty from that date. On Swiss representation: Walder Wyss (Zurich) and MLL Legal are both listed alliance members — the absence is not total. The practical question for Swiss in-house counsel is which of your preferred advisors is in the alliance and what that implies for billing models and matter economics as AI-assisted review becomes standard. And a data point the press release does not address: if your outside counsel is running AI-assisted review on your documents, where does that data go, and does the processing arrangement comply with your transfer obligations under DSG and DSGVO?

Swissinfo documents the scale of AI-based border management systems already deployed at EU external borders: biometric screening, risk scoring, document verification — the exact use cases classified as high-risk under Annex III of the EU AI Act. We covered in May the provisional delay of certain Annex III compliance obligations to 2027 — but the delay applies to implementation infrastructure requirements, not to prohibited-practice prohibitions or fundamental rights impact assessment obligations, which run now. Swiss technology vendors selling biometric or risk-scoring systems to border agencies need to have completed the AI Act jurisdictional and classification analysis before signing the next contract renewal. The audit is not the right place to discover you missed a Conformity Assessment.

Swissinfo's explainer on the Investitionsprüfgesetz is well-written background for anyone who needs to brief a board on screening without going into statutory detail. Accurate on political context, light on procedure — for the mechanics, our May piece on screening risk in the term sheet has the specifics. The IPG is not yet in force — the Bundesrat has not set an entry-into-force date, and 2027 is the earliest realistic timeline — but deal-structure analysis belongs in the term sheet now, not in the signing sprint. If your transaction touches critical infrastructure, defence-adjacent technology, or a significant position in a regulated sector, build the screening question into standard due diligence while there is still time to get a clean answer before the obligation goes live.

FINMA's planned move from Zurich city centre to Zurich-Oerlikon reflects two straightforward facts from the announcement: the existing premises lease is ending, and costs per workstation at the Oerlikon site will be lower. For entities with a supervisory relationship that involves regular Zurich face-time: update your logistics. For everyone else: the substantive supervision does not change with the postcode.