CFIUS and investment security
As US scrutiny of inbound and outbound investment intensifies, global investors face a more politicised and unpredictable national security review environment. Global investors face increased uncertainty as the US government intensifies its scrutiny of both inbound and outbound investment. Freshfields provides unmatched guidance on how to best navigate the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and US Outbound Investment Security Program.
Our Chambers-ranked group and lawyers specialize in assessing and mitigating CFIUS risk in cross-border M&A.
Freshfields offers the most experienced and globally integrated Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) group in the market. Our Chambers-ranked team works seamlessly across our award-winning Corporate and Antitrust groups, combining transaction execution, regulatory strategy and national security insight across jurisdictions.
Our CFIUS bench is anchored by Aimen Mir and Brian Reissaus, the two most recently departed CFIUS career heads, who together account for more than a decade of CFIUS leadership. They are joined by a former leader of the Intelligence Community unit responsible for producing the National Security Threat Assessments that underpin CFIUS decision-making.
Collectively, this group led CFIUS’s review of thousands of transactions, helped write the laws that govern CFIUS and designed the very procedures used to evaluate transactions and monitor compliance. This includes the methodology behind the classified National Security Threat Assessments that underpin decisions and framework used to impose of civil monetary penalties.
With more than 50 years of combined CFIUS experience across government and private practice, our team has been involved in shaping virtually every major development in recent decades across multiple administrations. This includes the 2018 Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act and the 2022 CFIUS Executive Order on CFIUS. While in government, our team managed nearly every review between 2009 and 2023, including every presidential prohibition and divestment order and mitigation agreement during that period. This combination of senior government leadership and private practice experience is unmatched in the market.
We support clients throughout the life cycle of a transaction. This includes structuring deals and analyzing risk with concrete and pragmatic advice, working with clients to ensure responses to information requests are effective in shaping CFIUS’s understanding of the transaction, developing creative and effective mitigation strategies, and negotiating National Security Agreements to maximize the ability of the companies to be commercial and competitive. Our track record includes securing CFIUS clearance in the most challenging and sensitive cross-border transactions, across every major sector and jurisdiction.
Our team also manages transaction-related notifications to the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation and to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency pursuant to the National Industrial Security Program.
Practical leadership on the US Outbound Investment Security Program
Freshfields is also at the forefront of advising on the US Outbound Investment Security Program (OISP). Introduced in 2025, the OISP applies to certain outbound investments into countries of concern, particularly China. Our team includes a former government official directly involved in the program’s design, including the foundational 2025 Executive Order, giving clients first-hand insight into its scope, intent, and operation.
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