Right before the new year, President Biden signed a $1.7 trillion spending bill that includes a number of new priorities. Among them: Funding “to consider establishing a program to address the national security threats emanating from outbound investment.” Details, deadlines, and funding inside.
South Dakota’s Kristi Noem is the latest governor to call for a review of the state’s investments to determine whether it has any stakes in Chinese companies. She’s not the first governor to conduct a “national security audit,” which we predicted would become more common. Details inside.
Outbound investment reviews are not on the radar screens of U.S. institutional investors or companies. Yet. That’s according to a new FIW survey, which showed nearly half weren’t aware of the potential for outbound investment reviews. Details on impact, preparedness, and expert insights are inside.
The vast majority of Foreign Investment Watch readers (69.1%) believe that President Biden will issue an Executive Order requiring national-security reviews of outbound foreign investments in China and other nations. Details on timing and the business impact are inside.
National security experts debated an outbound foreign investment regime at a recent Senate Banking Committee hearing. According to one expert, whatever the U.S. adopts, “we should be prepared for other countries to develop similar authorities.” Summary, details and testimony inside.
Three U.S. Senators and five Representatives, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, have sent a letter to President Biden urging his administration to “move forward with executive action” on an outbound foreign-investment review regime. Details and the actual letter are inside.
As rumors of a forthcoming Executive Order on outbound investment circulate, institutional investors are taking notice. Some advisors are already recommending that venture capital and private equity firms conduct “national security audits” of their portfolio companies. Details inside.
A national security screening mechanism for outbound investments was conspicuously absent from the $280 billion semiconductor bill passed by Congress last week. But the bill did include several outbound “guardrails,” and experts say the doors to an “outbound CFIUS” are still wide open.
A bipartisan group of Congressional leaders is working on a compromise that would create a new screening regime to review outbound investments in China and other adversarial nations. Experts have called the proposed regime “onerous.” A review and the latest updates are inside.
In the latest edition of our short video series “Ten Minutes On,” we discuss the potential for an outbound investment screening regime with expert and professor Sarah Bauerle Danzman. According to Danzman, the latest proposed regime would be “quite onerous.” All the details inside.
Back in early February, we reported that the nearly 3,000-page America COMPETES Act included a proposal to regulate outbound investments. Last week, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo indicated support for such a process. Details, likelihood, and implications inside.
Buried inside the nearly 3,000-page America COMPETES Act is a proposal to create an interagency process to regulate outbound investments. Details on these “National Critical Capabilities Reviews,” which would be the corollary of the CFIUS inbound review process, are inside.