Foreign Direct Investment and National Security
Foreign direct investment and national security reviews have become gating factors in an increasing number of mergers and acquisitions. With an integrated global team of leading experts, we provide our clients with critical insights, advice, and representation to enable them to navigate this increasingly complex landscape with confidence.
Over 100 jurisdictions now have foreign investment or national security laws providing for governmental review of investment transactions, with new or more stringent authorities coming on-line constantly. This is creating an ever more complex and volatile regulatory environment for cross-border M&A.
As leading advisors for global M&A, our foreign investment expertise is a core component of Freshfields’ deal-related regulatory and antitrust practices. We offer clients unique, cutting-edge experience-based insights into the economic, national security and political considerations driving governments’ rapidly evolving reviews of investments, as well as guiding them through parallel merger control and foreign subsidy processes.
Our highly integrated team builds upon a track record of experience representing clients in some of the most complex transactions before foreign investment regulators and negotiating some of the most complex risk mitigation agreements with authorities. We also leverage our deep understanding of such authorities from engagement with them on the structuring of their regimes or, in the case of CFIUS, prior positions of leadership within the authority.
Recent client successes
Advising EDF on its acquisition of General Electric’s nuclear steam business.
Advising Honeywell on the combination of Honeywell Quantum Computing and Cambridge Quantum Computing to form a new full-service quantum computing business, Quantinuum.
Advising Infineon on its acquisition of Cypress Semiconductor.
Advising Midea Group on its acquisition of Kuka.
Read more about the deal in our case study.
Advising Smiths Group on its acquisition of Morpho Detection.
Read more about the deal in our case study.
Awards & Recognitions
Global Elite Thought Leaders – Who’s Who Legal, Foreign Investment Review
International Trade: CFIUS Experts – Chambers and Partners, USA
No 1 for Global Merger Control (GCR 100 Survey)
