~$965M USD Logistics Merger Parties Announce NSI Clearance 

Sources: WSJ, SEC Filing 

Last week, U.S.-based GXO Logistics announced that the UK Secretary of State in the Cabinet Office informed them that the UK Government will not take any further action in relation to their acquisition under the NSI Act. In February, when GXO proposed a cash offer of acquiring UK-based, contracts logistics firm Wincanton, a mandatory notification to the UK government was triggered under the NSI regime, given the deal’s involvement of transportation infrastructure and logistics technology. The Wincanton board recommended shareholders approve the GXO offer, rejecting an earlier, lower-priced deal from Ceva Logistics. For GXO, the deal allows the company to become the largest contract logistics provider in the U.K. but the firm will take on ~$1 billion in debt. 

$145M USD Merger Parties Announce CFIUS and NSI Approvals as Conditions to Closing 

Source: SEC Filing 

U.S.-based Identiv, Inc., a global digital security and identification leader in the Internet of Things (IoT), announced a definitive agreement to sell its business segment of physical security, access card, and identity reader operations and assets to U.S.-based Hawk Acquisition, Inc. for $145 million, subject to various regulatory approvals and the sale of assets and shares of its subsidiary, Identiv Private Limited. Hawk Acquisition, Inc. has many portfolio companies, including the French-based security solutions provider Vitaprotech, which would be the ultimate recipient. The proceeds from the sale would go towards Identiv's plans to develop organic and inorganic growth of its specialty IoT solutions business. 

GAO Delivers Mitigation Enforcement Recommendations to CFIUS 

Source: GAO Report 

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report on CFIUS’ trends in mitigation agreements from 2000 through 2022, selected CFIUS member agencies' approaches to monitoring and enforcing compliance with mitigation agreements and reviewing them for continued relevance, and the selected agencies' staffing for monitoring and enforcement. GAO writes that their biggest findings are that CFIUS agencies do not regularly coordinate their staffing needs and overall, it is unclear to GAO how CFIUS makes enforcement decisions. Based on their findings, GAO is recommending five actions to the chair of CFIUS, the Treasury Department: documenting a committee-wide process for considering and making timely decisions on enforcement actions related to mitigation agreements; documenting a committee-wide process for periodically assessing the relevance of mitigation agreements and amending, phasing out, or terminating them when appropriate; documenting Treasury's objectives for increasing its staff for monitoring and enforcing compliance with CFIUS mitigation agreements; once the targeted staffing increase is completed, analyzing its CFIUS monitoring and enforcement staffing; establishing a committee-wide process to regularly discuss and coordinate the staffing levels needed to address the projected increase in workload associated with monitoring and enforcing CFIUS mitigation agreements.