Law Firm Publishes Data From Five Years of CFIUS Non-Notified Deals
Cooley this month published data about its experience advising on non-notified deals before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. between 2020 and 2024, outlining which investor nationalities, industry sectors and transaction sizes most often received CFIUS scrutiny.
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The law firm’s data shows that most non-notified outreaches that it was involved in focused on investments from China, with Singapore placing second. But many of the U.S. businesses that were targeted didn’t deal in “critical technology,” “critical infrastructure” or “sensitive personal data,” the law firm said, adding that this may indicate that a company’s status as a critical technology business may be a “poor proxy for the presence of perceived national security vulnerabilities.”
Cooley also said several transactions involved venture investments under $1 million, which highlighted that “transaction size seems to be a poor proxy for the presence of national security concerns arising from a transaction.”
Cooley said it drew its data from 50 non-notified matters between 2020 and 2024, which represented about 2% of the more than 2,000 “matters we advised on during the relevant five-year period.” It noted that the "annual share" of all CFIUS non-notified inquiries it handled has fallen each year since 2020, from 15% in 2020 to 7% in 2023. CFIUS hasn't yet released non-notified stats for 2024.