Competition And Foreign Investment Regulation

Investment Canada – The Year of the State-Owned Enterprise

2012 proved to be a highly eventful year for foreign investment law in Canada. Although numerous foreign investments by SOEs in the Canadian energy sector had received foreign investment approvals in recent years¹, the summer of 2012 saw the announcement of two multi-billion dollar energy transactions involving SOEs that collectively posed an unprecedented test for the Investment Canada Act and for Canadian policymakers. In June, Petronas (the Malaysian state-owned oil company) announced its $6 billion acquisition of Progress Energy. At the time, this was the largest-ever proposed acquisition of a Canadian company by a state-owned enterprise. But that record did not stand for long: just a month later, in July, CNOOC Limited (a majority Chinese state-owned oil company) announced its $15 billion acquisition of Nexen.