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In a provocative demonstration that it scrutinizes all types of transactions, no matter their origin, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS”) has reportedly been vetting the proposed $1 billion sale of bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital’s assets to Binance.

In a development that highlights current U.S. Government foreign investment priorities, Borqs Technologies Inc. (“Borqs”), a China-based corporation, announced on December 19, 2022, that a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS”) is leading Borqs to divest its investment in Holu Hou Energy LLC (“HHE”), a U.S. energy storage system company.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS” or the “Committee”) recently submitted its Annual Report to Congress for calendar year 2021 (“Annual Report”). The report summarized the Committee’s activity in calendar year 2021.

On June 17, 2022, TikTok Inc. (“TikTok”) reportedly completed the migration of its U.S. users’ information to servers at Oracle Corporation (“Oracle”) in a move that bars access by Chinese parent company ByteDance.

In addition to the recent, highly publicized regulatory actions due to the conflict in Ukraine, the United States government has been steadily turning up the heat on sanctions and export controls targeting Russia for years.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS”) earlier this month released a fact sheet announcing updates on excepted foreign states determinations, including the addition of New Zealand to CFIUS’s excepted foreign states list, effective as of January 6, 2022.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS”) has proposed a new rule which extends, for an additional year, the date by which CFIUS will make a determination regarding which countries will be exempt from certain CFIUS filing requirements as “excepted foreign states” or “excepted real estate foreign states.”

On October 5, 2021, the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) issued a final rule formally expanding its controls over the export of biotechnology software.