Charles McConnell

Inbound investment screening during President Donald Trump’s second term is likely to return to a more aggressive anti-China approach as hawks are appointed to key positions, with greater scrutiny also expected of various sovereign wealth funds, former government officials have said.

China’s probe into whether semiconductor giant Nvidia is complying with remedies attached to its 2020 acquisition of Mellanox “sends a strong signal” that it will leverage its merger control regime amid escalating trade tensions with the US.

Nippon Steel has criticised the politicisation of the national security review of its proposed $14.9 billion acquisition of US Steel and threatened legal action if President Joe Biden blocks the merger.

Requiring a US buyer to maintain a key facility in the UK as a condition for acquiring a key nuclear power company demonstrates the continuity of investment screening enforcement across governments.

TikTok faces an uphill battle to overturn an order requiring it to close its Canadian operations, but its challenge presents a rare opportunity for a court to assess the fairness of national security reviews, experts have said.

New Zealand has issued its first-ever criminal cartel penalty, sentencing a company director that admitted to rigging bids for publicly-funded construction projects to six months community detention and 200 hours of community work.

New Zealand’s Commerce Commission has recently flexed its dual mandate muscles by pursuing strict consumer protection sanctions against the same companies it is relying on to stimulate competition in key sectors.

Visa and Mastercard have successfully convinced an appellate court that a significant portion of damages claims filed by UK retailers are time-barred, but a Supreme Court challenge on the application of post-Brexit EU precedent could be incoming.

The Canadian government has cleared an Australian investor’s takeover of a domestic mining company on the condition that it implements an extensive suite of national security commitments limiting the merged company’s ability to engage with China.

India’s Supreme Court has upheld a lower court’s decision to quash an abuse of dominance probe by the national competition authority due to a private settlement between the parties, but questions of jurisdiction remain open.