Wayne Beck and Jonathon Gunn Provide Insight on NSIA Implementation With Global Competition Review

In “U.K.’s National Security Law Complicates Distress Restructurings, Lawyers Say,” Global Competition Review turned to finance and restructuring partner Wayne Beck and corporate associate Jonathon Gunn for their insight on the United Kingdom’s implementation of the National Security and Investment Act (NSIA).

The NSIA may reduce the number of options in distressed deals, which is not insurmountable but “is unlikely to be to the advantage of the underlying distressed U.K. target,” noted Beck. “Therefore, it will be increasingly important for advisers to be engaged and proactively considering the impact of the act at an early stage of any distressed or particularly distressed situation,” he added.

“It is obviously legitimate for the government to guard against genuine risks to national security,” said Gunn. “The notification procedure potentially injects delay into time-critical deals, and the process increases deal costs and multiplies uncertainty around potential conditions to approval, future costs of compliance with those conditions and the impact on a future exit,” he explained.