In our third podcast Christoph Barth, partner at our Antitrust and Foreign Investment Group in Dusseldorf, welcomes Florentine Kessler-Grobe, Head of Unit for Foreign Investment Screening of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action (“MoE”). Together they discuss recent trends, procedural questions and top tips for investors following a record year for German foreign investment control.

Topics covered include:

• Procedural questions and organisation of the MoE’s review process, including the engagement with the EU Screening mechanism
• The likelihood to end-up in an in-depth review and the reasons to open in-depths proceedings
• The interpretation of the newly introduced threshold of atypical control
• The most seen “customers” seen by the MoE in 2021 by industry sector and outlook for 2022
• Top tips from the MoE to navigate through foreign investment cases