I’ve successfully made it through the first work week at my new in-house job, so I’ll reward myself with some blogging. You may recall the Ralls case, where some Chinese investors (backed by SOE Sany) purchased a U.S. firm that owned several wind farms. However, the siting of one of these was problematic (too close [...]
You might remember the trouble Nike got into back in October when some consumers alleged that it maintained different product quality and pricing standards for Chinese customers than with consumers in other nations. This is by no means the first time that a foreign company has been attacked in China for treating customers differently, and [...]
If you haven’t heard, China’s sovereign wealth fund CIC bought a 10% stake in London’s Heathrow airport. I was waiting for the usual freaking out and hand wringing over this but then realized that I had made the mistake of using my American brain to analyze the situation. I’m not suggesting that Brits don’t have [...]
The Chairman of the U.S. House intelligence committee says that American companies should not do business with Huawei. Not cool.
Once the scope of the investigation was determined, there was simply no chance that this exercise was going to end well for Huawei and ZTE.
It would be nice if this lawsuit would shed some light on the U.S. national security review process, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
One company pulls out because of higher costs, therefore all foreign investors will be leaving soon, which is a good thing. Wait, what?
The U.S. says it’s open to Chinese investment. Sounds great, as long as you ignore all the China bashing going on in the background.
These days, no press coverage for multinationals in China equates to good PR. Time to engage the cloaking device.
Wal-Mart’s green pork scandal is quickly slipping into foreign investment legend as an example of protectionism. Too bad it’s probably not true.
Would a U.S. rejection of a China bid for Yahoo be legally justified? I’m not sure anyone would even bother to ask the question.
A VIE crackdown would involve a lot of practical difficulties. Don’t expect to see the CSRC to be in the vanguard of a new crusade.
China’s securities agency is worried about fraud and accounting scandals, but VIE structures take offshore listings out of its jurisdiction. Is more regulation the answer?
Product quality scandals tarnishing the Made in China brand? Easy fix: argue that foreign companies are just as bad, if not worse.
Is the government coming for your VIE? As long as you add value, you might be allowed to stick around for a while.
What does it mean when lawyers say that something is ‘illegal’? No surprise, the answer often is “it depends.”
Even if Zuckerberg wanted to sell some Facebook shares to Satan, the U.S. government would have no legal grounds to get involved.
Finally, a case study of what happens when the person with legal control of a China VIE goes rogue. It ain’t pretty, folks.
Attending the Boao Forum, China’s Minister of Commerce, Chen Deming, talked about China’s plans for further opening up of certain sectors to foreign investment: “Before China further opens up some sectors, we hope to get in returnequal opening-up within the WTO, and some developed countries in particular can open corresponding sectors[.]” You wouldn’t have heard [...]
Ready to take a journey back to the thrilling days of yesteryear, when the Net boom was on, the word “profit” was unknown, and “risk” was a little known concept? Let’s talk creative lawyering.