Axel Sicart
Global Procurement Senior Director
Bacardi
In an era of constant regulatory change, resource constraints, and digital disruption, compliance and legal leaders are navigating unprecedented complexity. This panel session offers a candid, off-the-record environment for senior industry practitioners to exchange real-world experiences, benchmark approaches, and discuss what’s truly shaping their day-to-day priorities. Participants will explore the latest challenges, emerging risks, and innovative solutions driving transformation across compliance, ethics, and legal operations. From managing AI integration and ESG expectations to tackling third-party risks and data governance, this is a chance to share what’s working- and what isn’t- in an open, peer-to-peer dialogue.
Designed for senior decision-makers, the session combines practical benchmarking, lessons learned, and intimate networking to inspire actionable insights that participants can take back to their organizations.
Compliance across healthcare, data privacy, HSE, and broader regulatory domains is central to effective risk management in pharma, where failure can trigger fines, reputational damage, and ESG impact. Despite their diversity, these areas rely on common foundations - clear policies, robust risk assessments, internal controls, third-party oversight, governance, training, and disciplined execution - yet management must still ask whether these frameworks are truly effective and sufficiently mature. This session examines how a strong second line assurance function can independently assess the design and maturity of compliance and control environments, providing objective insight, constructive challenge, and practical support to local units. It also explores a pragmatic approach to evaluating fraud risk management maturity under the COSO framework, leveraging existing structures to meet auditor expectations, avoid duplication, and strengthen overall assurance.
Christof Stolla
Head Corporate Ethics, Risk & Compliance Assurance
Novartis
Cyber incidents are no longer isolated technical disruptions— they pose significant operational, financial, reputational, and regulatory risks to organizations across industries.
With threats growing in frequency and sophistication, effective crisis management has become a critical leadership
priority.
This session will examine the real-world challenges organizations face in responding to cyberattacks, from the immediate pressure of incident containment to longterm
recovery, stakeholder communication, and regulatory compliance.
Sanctions regimes, export controls, and service prohibitions are evolving at speed - often faster than corporate governance frameworks can adapt. For Swiss and international businesses operating across holding structures, trading platforms, and complex supply chains, exposure can arise unexpectedly through subsidiaries, counterparties, or indirect ownership links. What appears compliant today can become a reputational and regulatory risk overnight.
This session brings together audit, legal, and compliance leaders to explore how organisations are identifying hidden sanctions exposure, strengthening onboarding and counterparty due diligence, and redesigning controls to address sudden regulatory shifts. With a practical, Swiss-focused lens, the discussion will examine how boards and compliance teams can move beyond traditional fraud controls to manage dynamic enforcement risk in an increasingly unpredictable environment.
Marco Stolla
Managing Partner
Crowe Curator