Bill to protect UK against harmful foreign investment becomes law
- Reference: 1619801535
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/04/30/national_security_investment_act/
- Source link:
The National Security and Investment Bill, which was introduced last November and has since received royal assent, gives the government powers to scrutinise, alter, and block transactions where there is a risk to national security. These powers extend to both equity and intellectual property.
[1]
Additionally, private entities and investors will have to warn the government about any prospective transactions regarding sensitive sectors such as artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and space. Mandatory disclosure is required should a person's stake in a company working in a controlled area exceed 25 per cent.
The bill also provides a framework for voluntary disclosures if an investor believes a transaction may have national security implications, but is not covered under the existing designated sensitive sectors. The government also has the authority to "call in" acquisitions that managed to slip the net.
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The enforcement regime is not expected to kick in until later this year. The government said it believes most transactions will be unaffected by this, and those that face scrutiny should only be held up by 30 days. Transactions will not be revisited unless the government has reason to believe that false or misleading information was provided.
[3]You're V1 for me, says Arm: Chip biz's 'highest-performance core' takes aim at supercomputers, AI, anything relying on vector math
[4]UK digital secretary Oliver Dowden starts national security probe into proposed Arm-Nvidia merger
[5]Jensen Huang's kitchen gets another viewing as Nvidia teases Arm-powered supercomputing chip Grace
[6]Arm pulls the sheets off its latest Armv9 architecture with added AI support, Realms software isolation
In a statement, business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng waxed lyrical about the importance of protecting national security, saying: "This historic Act will ensure we are better equipped to protect our citizens from the small number of foreign investors that seek to do us harm.
"The UK faces continued and broad-ranging hostile activity from those who seek to compromise our national security and that of our allies. Such behaviour left unchecked can leave Britain vulnerable to disruption, unfair leverage, and espionage. It is crucial that the government has the tools at our disposal to combat these threats coming from ever more determined overseas actors."
The entry of the National Security and Investment Bill into law has coincided with the government's [7]belated intervention in the proposed acquisition by Nvidia of Cambridge-based, SoftBank-owned chip designer Arm over national security grounds. This follows the launch of an ongoing investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority.
While the government is correct in wanting to protect our technological crown jewels from unwelcome foreign investment, one can't help but feel that ship has already sailed.
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With [9]Arm , [10]Imagination , [11]DeepMind , and [12]Marconi all snatched by foreign investors over the years, what's left to protect, save for [13]our innovative jam industry ? ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YIx9@akV5IUjeIs0SXbQLAAAAVQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YIx9@akV5IUjeIs0SXbQLAAAAVQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[3] http://www.theregister.com/2021/04/27/arm_v1_n2_neoverse/
[4] http://www.theregister.com/2021/04/19/digital_secretary_oliver_dowden_nivida_arm/
[5] http://www.theregister.com/2021/04/12/nvidia_arm_chips/
[6] http://www.theregister.com/2021/03/30/arm_v9_chips/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/19/digital_secretary_oliver_dowden_nivida_arm/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YIx9@akV5IUjeIs0SXbQLAAAAVQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/18/softbank_to_buy_arm_holdings_say_reports/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/16/uk_govt_imagination_china/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2018/11/15/google_our_deepmind_health_slurp_is_kosher/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2005/10/25/ericsson_buys_marconi/
[13] https://twitter.com/tradegovuk/status/782860452325982208
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Harmful foreign "investment" in political parties.
Damn you beat me to it...........
I was going to ask does it cover Boris Johnson selling most of London to Russian oligarchs who are happy with assassination, and Saudi princes who favour beating women?
Re: Russian Oligarchs
Started coming here in the 1990s. Under Tony Blair, it became a big problem. There are shops in West London where you can hear many different Russian dialects all at the same time. It was in one of these that I met my wife.
|In recent years, President (for life) Putin has grown more dictatorial /Stalinist and the trickle has become a flood. Those Russkies bring money into the country. How legal much of it is.. is another question entirely.
This is a different economic problem from the one of buying up a UK company and setting its IP, jobs and everything abroad.
Re: Russian Oligarchs
So are we welcoming these anti-Putin, pro-democracy refugees?
What's Home Office policy on rich white refugees?
Consecutive governments, with the Conservatives in the vanguard, have allowed our most precious national assets to be sold off to the highest bidder without much in the way of scrutiny.
Lyons
Rover
Apricot
Acorn
ARM
Inmos
Plessey
Reuters
Jaguar
Cadbury
Rowntree
British Steel
…I could go on. The point is the the lions of British industry, those companies which powered our wealth, have been stripped and sold. We have virtual nothing left now that our political masters have grown fat by slaying our golden geese.
Brexit offers no protection - if anything, it’s made matters worse because some of those companies were sold to our erstwhile friends in the EU and they may have felt some duty to their ally before we demonstrated ourselves to be untrustworthy and lacking in sense. Those countries of the EU, by and large, have the good sense to protect their Crown Jewels. We should have done this decades ago, when we still had some.
re: Jaguar
JLR was sold to Ford in 2000 and then Ford sold it in 2009 to Tata.
Both of those deals were done with a Labor Government in power.
Both main UK Political parties have questions to answer on this whole mess. I can remember Mt Gannex himself talking bollocks about 'the white heat of technology. Even he wasn't afraid to sell parts of the UK Industrial crown jewels to Johhny foreigner.
Re: re: Jaguar
I thought I was clear that this wasn’t exclusively a Conservative problem. I said ‘consecutive governments’ not ‘conservative governments’. The Tories have merely hoovered up the majority of the trough, not quite all of it.
Without outside capital Acorn would have failed before there was a chance to spin out ARM which itself was financed with US capital (Apple) from a US idea (UC Berkeley RISC) needing US tools (VLSI). The CEO, 12 engineers and the rented barn were British but their starting with a global aspect is what allowed them to achieve global success. Big money is global, if you start being fussy about which geography it comes from not only does it massively restrict your choice of provision but the investors worry about you letting it leave and it just stops coming.
Don't know why Rover was on your list - certainly not near the top - and it had itself (and perhaps nationalisation) to blame for the state it ended up in which was so "precious" the tools had to go to one mainland Chinese company while the drawings went to another which might have provided a bit of work around Longbridge for a while but it took the CCP to amalgamate both buyers into one company to fix that fire-sale.
There'll be a story behind every organisation on your list, either their inability to change and compete at a global level or their success at doing so leading you to no longer consider them British. This country has a far bigger problem globalising local successes than it does hanging on to companies that have achieved it and your comment that there is, "virtual nothing left now" plainly isn't supported by UK treasury receipts - even the massive debt pile we're building is evidence the market thinks we're good for it in future.
Your whole message reads like you're afraid of the world thinking it's enough to retreat into the EU's protectionist bunker mindset but the EU is only half of Europe and even all of Europe isn't enough. If previous occupants of these islands had taken your attitude we would never have set sail to trade around the world with the consequence that few on your list of "lions" would have come into existence anyway. I suspect 47 years of EEC/EU membership has fuddled some people's perspectives.
Isn't money from China building Hinkley Point nuclear power plant?
How does that fit in with these new laws?
We have - for once - May's government to thank that Red China are only bankrolling Hinkley Point, rather than building their own design of PWR. Shame we killed our indigenous nuclear industry so that we're forced into buying old designs in new bottles at vast expense. One can only hope the SMR programme delivers something good; although it's a shame that (AFAIK - might well be wrong) the entrant with good experience of building reliable PWR reactors in the ~100 MW range hasn't got a separate contract to build some SMRs soon.
Decades late
The aquisition of valuable UK companies and IPs by foreign controlled entities has been going on for decades and has been a known issue for all of that time. I'm glad that someone has eventually started to try and put on the breaks a bit, but I'd love to know why on earth it took this long to do.
Re: Decades late
We should be flattered that global entities are interested in investing in our stuff. It's also in your interest that your pension fund doesn't restrict it's investments to UK sovereign territory and even your local council providing local services will have funds invested globally.
Money flows are global, you're correct that this has been going on for decades but it's really nothing to be afraid of.
The government has always had the powers to block foreign ownership of UK companies. It's profiteering and short-termism that let things go through.
The fact that many of the UK companies have been bought using extensive loans which are then immediately transferred to the bought company is yet another endemic problem with the corruptness of it all.
"what's left to protect, save for our innovative jam industry? ®"
The Marmite industry is still thoroughly British, although it was invented by a German.
From the article, it doesn't sound as though there is much to define when the government should or should not intervene, just as there is little to define what constitutes national security.
Harmful foreign "investment" in political parties.
Will that be covered? How about in the London property market?