CFIUS and Foreign Direct Investment Regulation

A Leader in CFIUS and FDI Representation

Our extensive experience with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) predates its creation, as we represented Fujitsu in its effort to acquire Fairchild Semiconductor — one of the transactions that led to the establishment of the committee. Since then, we have handled many of the most prominent and challenging CFIUS cases, as a one-stop shop for U.S. CFIUS, from pre-transaction counseling to outreach after non-notified transactions.

With broad national security experience, we navigate the sensitive — and often controversial — CFIUS process and similar national security or foreign direct investment (FDI) reviews around the world. We also advise clients in all aspects of foreign ownership, control or influence (FOCI) mitigation processes, including strategic planning, risk assessment, due diligence, filing, negotiation and implementation.

Who We Help

We excel in supporting foreign investors and others across the aerospace and defense, technology and funds sectors, among others. We have represented a broad range of global investors on CFIUS and related FOCI and national security matters, including private equity and investment firms, corporations and state-owned enterprises. Our clients are from all corners of the globe — Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. Regardless of where they are located, they trust us to handle their most sensitive and complex matters for CFIUS reviews.

Why Clients Choose Paul Hastings

We leverage our decades of experience addressing national security hurdles with CFIUS, as well as economic sanctions and export controls regulators, to advise clients in the early stages of national security reviews and provide strategic advice to FDIs.

• Our global team, together with a trusted network of local practitioners where we do not maintain offices, is well-known to FDI regulators around the world.
• We routinely present privately on CFIUS and FDI for U.S. and non-U.S. regulators.
• We serve as trusted advisers to, and have led FDI filings for, U.S. and non-U.S. public companies.
• We have secured dozens of FDI clearances on behalf of U.S. and non-U.S. entities in the past year alone.

Precedent-Setting Experience:

• Served as lead counsel on one of the highest-profile transactions ever to hit the CFIUS docket — the 2013 acquisition of Smithfield Foods by what is now WH Group. This was the largest-ever takeover of a U.S. company by a Chinese company at the time.
• Secured clearance for Chinese public company COSCO Shipping Holdings in its acquisition of Orient Overseas International Lines, the most complex Chinese transaction to win approval from CFIUS during the first Trump administration.
• Obtained CFIUS clearance for the acquisition of Sirtex Medical Limited, a cutting-edge biotech company, by CDH Fund, a PRC investment company.

Additional Representative Experience:

• Led CFIUS clearance and ITAR clearance processes for the “KANT” joint venture formed by the combination of France’s Nexter Systems and Germany’s Krauss Maffei Wegmann group.
• Assisted a U.S. aerospace manufacturer and key military supplier in obtaining CFIUS clearance for the acquisition of its parent company by a European defense firm.
• Guided CJ Logistics on obtaining CFIUS clearance for the acquisition of U.S. warehousing, transportation and logistics assets.
• Represented Hanwha Systems, a Korean publicly traded company, in its minority investment in EU and U.S.-based low earth satellite technology companies before CFIUS, and Hanwha Solutions in another matter involving a minority investment in a solid-state battery producer before CFIUS.
• Represented EnCap in its joint sale with Apollo Global Management of Broad Reach Power LLC, which owns and operates utility-scale standalone battery storage projects throughout the United States, to French power company Engie S.A., for up to $1.1 billion.
• Represented eMagin, a U.S. publicly traded company focused on the research and development, design, manufacturing and marketing of organic light-emitting diode miniature displays, with respect to its acquisition by Samsung Display Co., Ltd. (SDC), a Japanese company.
• Counseled some of the world’s largest microchip design and manufacturing companies, as well as their customers, on compliance with U.S. and foreign government restrictions on the export of encryption technology.