Foreign direct investment and CFIUS 

New FDI regimes have proliferated in recent years, while existing frameworks have expanded significantly in scope.

At the same time the enforcement environment is tougher, and with FDI authorities now routinely coordinating their reviews with counterparts in “friendly” third party countries – and merger control and sector regimes adding an additional layer of regulatory complexity – it’s critical to take a co-ordinated approach across multiple parallel reviews to keep international deals on track. 

Global team with government experience 

Our global team helps clients secure foreign investment clearances for the market's biggest and most complex matters, from strategic M&A to private equity deals, restructuring and secured debt transactions. Our FDI group includes lawyers who previously held senior positions within agencies including the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), and as a result, governments often seek our views on proposed new and amended regimes. These insights help us shape our clients' clearance strategies. 

We advise across all major regimes including CFIUS, the U.S. Department of Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, the EU FDI Regulation, the rules of EU member states, the United Kingdom National Security and Investment Act, and Australia's Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB).  

Expertise across multiple sectors 

Our clients include multinational corporations in the defense, aerospace, telecommunications, energy, agriculture, chemical, biotechnology, banking, real estate, manufacturing, mining, and transportation industries.  

We also regularly counsel state-owned enterprises, financial institutions, private equity firms, consortia, and other domestic and foreign issuers and investors as they structure and negotiate their transactions in these sectors.  

And alongside FDI rules, we counsel our clients on related national security issues including supply chain matters, risk mitigation, and security compliance monitoring, export control and international trade issues, government contract reviews and national industrial security program (NISP) compliance.