Jasper Helder Discusses UK Nat’l Security and Investment Act in ‘Chancery Lane Chats’ Podcast

Akin Gump international trade Jasper Helder was the featured guest on the Chancery Lane Chats podcast series, produced by Montfort Communications and hosted by Kiran Nagendran, to discuss the U.K.’s 2002 Enterprise Act as well as the National Security and Investment Act (NSIA), the latter due to come into force in January 2022.

On the topic of the Enterprise Act, Helder said that the Act was primarily aimed as an antitrust and competition framework, and only in 2018, out of concerns that the U.K. government “didn’t have any intervening powers in such transactions where that was relevant for national security” was it amended “as a fix” to address these transactions.

He noted that, at the time of this amendment, there was some question as to what constituted “national security,” although, he notes that the transactions that came before the Competition and Markets Authority, after the amendment, were “fairly intuitive and obvious” as to their defense sector and national security significance. He added that, now, the “nuance of what is considered national security is slightly starting to shift away” from those transactions that are intuitively germane to national security due to shifts in geopolitics.

Helder discussed the impact and intent, in 2018, of the reduction in threshold for acquisitions in areas deemed to be of national security to the U.K., deeming it a “stopgap” at the time but having ripples to the current day that are influencing outside investment in the U.K. due to concerns about government intervention.

The conversation then moved to the differences between the aim of the Enterprise Act and that of the National Security and Investment Act. Helder noted that the key differences are in the levels of ownership-percentage triggers under the NSIA and in the way that “national security interest” has been specified. He said that, in practice, under the NSIA, “we will see some examples in the future of deals where it’s not necessarily dependency on key technology for the U.K. government or key sectors of the economy that becomes relevant from a national security consideration, but where it is retaining that technology in the U.K.”

To hear the full episode covering the preceding and other topics, click here.