What is it exactly that gets up the collective nose of the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States? What, we ask, constitutes a grave threat to the “land of the free”?
It is more dangerous for foreigners to take a minority stake in a “provider of enterprise and small-business networking solutions that help organizations achieve their business and networking objectives?”
Or for foreigners to seize full control of the nation’s “premier provider of decision-making insight to businesses and government” – a specialist in the “the identification, retrieval, storage, analysis and delivery of data…(serving) the informational needs of businesses of all sizes, as well as federal, state and local government agencies?”
Cheap and cheerful networking kit or high-end risk management systems.
We assume it depends who the foreigners are. So the fact that Bain Capital (Boston-based private equity firm run by a variety of clean cut types) had a 16.5 per cent partner in the shape of Huawei Technologies (ambitious, secretive Shenzhen-based telco) meant its $2.2bn plan to acquire 3Com would not be granted Cfius approval. And the plan by Reed Elsevier (Anglo-Dutch entity that can trace its origins to Tovil Mill, in Kent, in 1894) to refocus its business online by paying $4.1bn for ChoicePoint will be just fine.
But we wonder, have the inter-departmental mandarins and generals who make up Cfius actually met Sir Crispin Davis?
Related link
Reed reshapes to focus on online business – FT.com