Over the past year, the impact of international political risks on the global tech industry has been unprecedented.”
Tung Tzu-hsien, Chairman of iPhone’s Chinese assembly company, Pegatron

Technology investment is getting harder. A few years ago, strategic and private equity technology acquisitions, multinational joint venture creation, and cross-border R&D collaboration were not only relatively straightforward, they were an economic engine driving the global technology economy.

Now, U.S. export controls, technology transfer restrictions, CFIUS and other investment reviews, and tariffs and non-tariff barriers have begun to limit the options for successful transactions in the tech sector. In this article, we examine the new and emerging challenges and suggest a strategies for navigating the changing currents of global trade and politics to get your deal done despite the shifting landscape. Continue Reading INTERNATIONAL TECH INVESTMENT ISSUE – Threats to Technology Investment from Global Politics: How to Succeed as Borders Tighten

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, CFIUS, is the U.S. government agency that conducts national security reviews of foreign direct investment in the United States. The CFIUS rules have been significantly tightened over time, which has created major obstacles, particularly to technology investments, and particularly for Chinese investors.

But as investors turn elsewhere looking for more a more streamlined investment process, they may be disappointed. Around the world, countries are creating new laws, or dusting off old ones, to allow their governments to examine and restrict foreign investment.

This article presents an overview of the emerging (or reemerging) foreign investment legal regimes in the EU – including domestic laws in France, Germany, Italy and the UK – Canada, Norway, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. For brevity in this article, we summarize our analysis in graphics and tables. However, we recommend that investors obtain a thorough legal analysis from local counsel before proceeding with an investment in any of the countries discussed here. Continue Reading INTERNATIONAL TECH INVESTMENT ISSUE – Investments With Borders: CFIUS-Style Foreign Investment Review Goes Global

This article originally appeared in Risk & Compliance magazine in the UK, a publication of Financier Worldwide. The piece includes UK spelling and grammar.

Key Takeaways:

A wave is coming. An enormous wave of regulation will soon crash on Silicon Valley, Boston and other tech centres around the United States, and very few people have their surfboards ready.

Major technologies in exciting emerging fields (among them, biomedicines, virtual reality, and robotics) will soon be subject to strict export controls that will limit who can receive the technologies, who can use them, and even who can research them.

Forthcoming export controls will disrupt logistics planning, information sharing, R&D, and acquisition strategies for companies in the United States and all around the world. Continue Reading INTERNATIONAL TECH INVESTMENT ISSUE – A Wave of Export Regulation to Hit US Technologies

“A free and open economy is the foundation of global peace and prosperity.”
– Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, G20 summit, June 2019.

On July 1, 2019, only few days after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe opened the G20 summit with a speech endorsing an open global economy, the Japanese government announced that it will impose tighter controls on technology-related exports from Japan to South Korea for reasons of national security. The controls may have a devastating effect on trade between the two countries and will create further drag on the world economy. Continue Reading A Chinese Export License to Get a Smart Phone? Tech-Tonic Changes in World Export Controls