Partner Giovanna Cinelli spoke with The Deal about the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’s (CFIUS’s) potential decision on Nippon Steel Corp.’s proposed purchase of U.S. Steel Corp. Giovanna noted that Nippon Steel’s existing US assets could be a potential liability, due to a 2022 executive order that gave CFIUS leeway to examine cross-border acquisitions in a wider context.
“The president did direct CFIUS to look at consolidation in industry sectors. If you’ve got Nippon Steel owning and partnering on smaller steel mills and now coming in and buying what’s basically a behemoth, that accumulation in an industry sector would fit squarely within that executive order,” Giovanna said.