CFIUS’s Expanding Jurisdiction in the Magnachip Acquisition

Brandon Van Grack and James Brower authored an article for Lawfare covering the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’ (CFIUS) unprecedented intervention in the recent attempt by Wise Road Capital, a China-based private equity firm, to acquire Magnachip, a South Korean semiconductor company.

“CFIUS’s actions signal that the past is not prologue for the review of foreign direct investment in the United States,” the authors wrote. “CFIUS intends to use whatever tools it has to further U.S. national security interests, even if it never before acknowledged such tools existed. That toolbox now includes the ability to assert jurisdiction over transactions taking place largely outside of and with a very limited nexus to the United States. Considering the countless businesses that trade on U.S. stock exchanges or set up limited liability companies in Delaware, it is difficult to know where that jurisdiction ends. Parties will need to carefully assess their nexus to the United States, even if the overwhelming majority – and most meaningful – of a business’s assets are outside the United States.”

Read the full article.