Jumpstart Bio (West Coast Series)

CFIUS’s Expanding Jurisdiction: the National Security Dimension of Foreign Investment in Life Sciences and Digital Health

Late last year, the U.S. Department of the Treasury exercised its authority under the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) to implement a Pilot Program that expands the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and imposes mandatory filing requirements on certain transactions in the U.S. technology sector. As a result, certain biotech and other life science and healthcare companies and their investors are facing dramatically increased scrutiny of cross-border venture investments and acquisitions. These changes, combined with an escalating trade war and executive actions of uncertain and evolving effect, have slowed the flow of funds from non-U.S. investors into U.S. life sciences and digital health companies and limited the ability of Chinese companies and others to collaborate with U.S. companies. Imminent regulatory changes implementing FIRRMA will expose a range of new technologies and sectors to CFIUS jurisdiction, impose new export controls on the transfer of these technologies to non-U.S. persons, and generate hard interpretive and strategic questions — including for many life sciences companies and their investors.

Please join Goodwin CFIUS and trade expert Richard Matheny to learn more about the current rapidly shifting situation, navigating the evolving CFIUS review process, and how CFIUS and related regulatory expansions/trade shrinkage could adversely affect U.S. life science and healthcare companies raising foreign capital and foreign investors seeking opportunities in the United States and beyond.

Goodwin life sciences corporate partner Sam Zucker will host an investor panel that includes Third Rock Ventures partner, Jeffrey Tong, and Qiming Managing Partner, Christopher Shen, to discuss challenges in forming and holding together international investor syndicates, practical business aspects of international capital, and the changing role of non-U.S. life science and healthcare investors and innovations, particularly those based in China and Hong Kong. 

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