Good morning. The U.K.’s exit from the European Union could bring significant changes to the country’s sanctions policy—a scenario that could complicate compliance for multinational companies.

It won’t happen right away, however. Although Britain is set to officially withdraw its membership from the European Union on Friday, an agreement approved Wednesday by the European Parliament provides for a transition period until Dec. 31.

[Continued below...]

During the transition, individuals and companies in the U.K. are still required to comply with the EU’s sanctions policies. But some new autonomous U.K. sanctions—particularly around human rights issues—could be implemented during the transition.

“Come Dec. 31, there will be more divergence, and companies need to follow those two similar but different sanctions regulations,” said Susannah Cogman, a partner at law firm Herbert Smith Freehills LLP in London.

Compliance officers and sanctions lawyers, meanwhile, will be monitoring whether the U.K.’s sanctions policy ultimately diverges or aligns with the policies set by the EU or the U.S. Corporate compliance officers will need to analyze U.K. sanctions to determine which parts of their businesses are subject to U.K. or EU regulations, or both, and which licenses they might need, Ms. Cogman said.

• Executives Brace for Post-Brexit Changes
• U.K. Companies Tackle Brexit’s Effect on Tech Hiring
• Video: As One Brexit Countdown Ends, Another Begins

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed changes to existing regulation on public company disclosures.

The proposal made Thursday would mark the latest amendments to Regulation S-K, rules under the Securities Act of 1933 that serve as the foundation of disclosure requirements for U.S. public companies. The regulator says the changes seek to simplify the disclosures for both companies and investors.

Under the proposal, companies would no longer be required to provide five years of selected financial data or two years of selected quarterly financial data. The proposal also would make several changes to the management-discussion-and-analysis section of companies’ financial statements, the regulator said.

Separately, the SEC is weighing guidance for the MD&A section that states companies intending to disclose metrics should consider whether additional disclosures are necessary.

“The improved disclosures would allow investors to make better capital allocation decisions, while reducing compliance burdens and costs without in any way adversely affecting investor protection,” SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said in a statement.

The proposed rule has been released for public comment over the next 60 days, the commission said. To read the full proposal, click here.

–Mark Maurer

The daughter of a former director of Eurasian Natural Resources Corp., a mining company at the center of an ongoing U.K. bribery probe, has been found guilty of withholding documents.

Anna Machkevitch was convicted by a U.K. judge of failing to comply with a request for documents and ordered to pay £800 ($1,047), the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office said Thursday.

Ms. Machkevitch is a director at London-based ALM Services U.K. Ltd. and the Machkevitch Foundation, according to the SFO. Her conviction is the latest development in the SFO’s long-running corruption probe of ENRC.

The Trump administration Thursday announced the completion of the first transactions under a new program meant to allow humanitarian trade to Iran, while leaving in place broader sanctions on the country’s economy.

The trade to Iran involved three shipments of drugs for cancer and transplant treatment, sent by an unidentified European firm, said Brian Hook, the State Department’s special envoy for Iran. Switzerland, which serves as the Washington’s representative in Tehran in the absence of U.S.-Iranian diplomatic ties, helped arrange the shipment.

• Banks in the U.S. would no longer face limits on ownership stakes in venture capital funds under a proposal put forth on Thursday by regulators including the Federal Reserve.
   
• Federal regulators on Thursday proposed so-called position limits in markets for commodities such as gold, sugar and crude oil while leaving exchanges with considerable leeway in deciding how to contain speculative bets.
   
• The Federal Trade Commission put 19 internet-based phone companies on notice that assisting or facilitating robocalls could land them in legal trouble, the latest in a series of increasingly aggressive government actions targeting firms that play a role in connecting the millions of illegal calls plaguing Americans.
   
• Bank of America told a 92-year-old customer it would attempt to recover nearly $40,000 he lost to a phone scam—but only after the man signed legal papers promising not to discuss the fraud or sue the bank. Such agreements help conceal losses to scammers, consumer advocates say, limiting awareness of increasingly sophisticated forms of fraud that many victims already find embarrassing. 
   
• A Japanese court issued Thursday arrest warrants for three Americans who prosecutors said were suspected of helping former Nissan Motor Chairman Carlos Ghosn escape Japan in late December by hiding inside luggage.

The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak in China a public health emergency of international concern, pointing to a significant increase in the number of cases and the disease’s spread to other countries.

The designation, issued Thursday, came as the first person-to-person transmission of the virus was reported in the U.S.

The WHO designation indicates that international public-health authorities now consider the respiratory virus a significant threat beyond China, where it originated last month. The move could further heighten the global response to the outbreak.

• Facebook to Ban Posts About Fake Coronavirus Cures
• Ross: Coronavirus Outbreak Could Help Bring Jobs Back to U.S. 
• Luxury Brands Fear Sales Hit as Chinese Shoppers Stay Home
• Coronavirus Spurs Fresh Fears About Growth in Emerging Markets

• Altria Group again slashed the value of its investment in Juul Labs and stripped down its agreement to provide services to the startup as it weathers regulatory crackdowns on the e-cigarette market.

A Republican member of the Federal Trade Commission voiced skepticism that government antitrust enforcement against big tech companies will lead to better privacy protections for consumers.

Commissioner Noah Phillips, speaking Thursday at Stanford Law School, said competition in tech markets, as well as privacy for consumers, are both important issues, but ones that can pull in different directions. “Competition and privacy are often at odds,” Mr. Phillips said in prepared remarks. Using antitrust law to advance privacy protections, he predicted, “will fail.”

The speech highlights one conundrum facing the FTC and the Justice Department as they investigate whether companies such as Facebook and Alphabet’s Google are using their dominant market positions, including their control over vast amounts of data, to squelch rivals. It also suggests that any government antitrust action against Big Tech may not be able to address all of the public’s worries about Silicon Valley.

• IKEA will give consumers broad new controls over the way it collects and uses data about them on its digital platforms, the company said. The move comes as marketers increasingly try to stand out by standing for causes such as sustainability or privacy. Regulators in Europe and California, meanwhile, are enforcing privacy regulations that limit what companies can do with consumer data, and new laws on the subject have been proposed.

The biggest supplier on the Boeing 737 MAX program said Thursday it had reached a new production deal for the plane but also revealed an internal accounting probe that led to the ouster of its chief financial officer.

Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc. also pushed back the planned closing of a big acquisition as it announced that CFO Jose Garcia had resigned with immediate effect, replaced by Mark Suchinski. It said its chief accounting officer was also departing. The company said a continuing probe hadn’t so far uncovered anything that would have a material financial impact. 

IBM said Chief Executive Ginni Rometty is stepping down after a difficult eight-year run at the top of the iconic technology company as she struggled to deliver growth at a time other tech giants’ fortunes blossomed. 

Ms. Rometty, 62 years old, will formally step down on April 6. She will be replaced by Arvind Krishna, who heads the company’s cloud and cognitive software division, the company said on Thursday. Jim Whitehurst—the chief executive of Red Hat, the open-source software giant that IBM acquired for approximately $33 billion last year—was appointed the company’s president.

• Hours after Microsoft pledged to eliminate its carbon emissions within a decade earlier this month, the company was forced to fire up fossil fuel generators to power its corporate campus in Fargo, N.D. The software giant ran the diesel-burning machines for about five hours to keep the lights and heat on for 1,600 employees. Discharges were tiny relative to Microsoft’s ambitious climate goals, which include switching to 100% renewable energy in five years and eliminating by 2050 all the greenhouse-gas emissions it has produced since its founding in 1975. But they demonstrate a larger point: Corporations face a monumental challenge in living up to their climate pledges if they are reliant on other companies for energy.

• Companies challenged by the shortage of skilled technology staff are using an old-fashioned method—the apprenticeship—to recruit nontraditional workers for entry-level roles.
   
• AmerisourceBergen said it is pulling the plug on its PharMEDium Healthcare Holdings Inc. unit after more than two years of regulatory and operational issues at the compounding business.

Subscribe to The Morning Risk Report here.

Follow us on Twitter at @WSJRisk, @kcbroughton, @_MengqiSun  and @dgtokar. 

Send comments to the Risk & Compliance editor, Jack Hagel, at jack.hagel@wsj.com