M&A Science Live - The EU and FDI: What Dealmakers Need to Know
Most deal teams find out about foreign investment screening requirements the wrong way-after they're already committed.
France's FDI regime has teeth. Filings are mandatory in covered sectors, timelines are real, and conditions can reshape deal structure, governance, and post-close operations. Across the EU, parallel regimes are adding complexity that wasn't there five years ago.
Wesley Lainé is a lawyer at Skadden in Paris focused on sanctions, export controls, and French foreign investment screening. He's also been seconded into Société Générale, where he saw how major financial institutions embed this risk into deal workflow-not as an afterthought, but as a deal-critical step.
This session covers the mechanics: what triggers a filing, how reviews actually work, what conditions look like, and how to build approval risk into your timeline before you're locked in.
Live Q&A at the end-bring your deal questions.
What You’ll Learn
How to determine whether a cross-border deal triggers a French or EU FDI filing requirement
What the France review process actually looks like: steps, reviewers, and realistic timelines
How to anticipate remedies and conditions before they arrive as surprises post-signing
Where sanctions and export controls change what 'good diligence' means in cross-border deals
What to do before LOI to flag approval risk fast-without slowing down origination
When to restructure a deal to protect certainty-to-close, and how to think through that tradeoff
Which sectors are drawing the most regulatory scrutiny right now-and why
Who Should Attend
Corp dev leaders, integration leads, and deal counsel running cross-border acquisitions in France or the EU who need to build regulatory risk into their process from day one.
Speaker Bios
Kison Patel – Founder, M&A Science | Chairman, DealRoom
Kison built DealRoom to ~$10M ARR and has led M&A execution across hundreds of transactions. He founded M&A Science to extract and share the patterns strong buyers use to win deals, turning practitioner experience into searchable, reusable intelligence.
Wesley Lainé - Lawyer at Skadden
Wesley Lainé is a lawyer at Skadden in Paris, where he advises deal teams on sanctions, export controls, and French foreign investment screening. He has been seconded into Société Générale, giving him direct visibility into how major institutions operationalize regulatory risk inside live transactions. Wesley works at the intersection of deal certainty and regulatory complexity-a combination that makes him one of the clearest practitioners to learn from on this topic.
Member Access
M&A Science members get:
Full session recording access inside the Membership library
Session takeaways (key insights organized for practitioners)
Access to the broader M&A Science member library (plays, templates, and real-world frameworks)
If you want access: Become an M&A Scientist. Join the community of the best practitioners in M&A.
→ Membership: $995/year → mascience.com/membership
FAQs
Will this session be recorded?
Yes. The recording and Structure Cards will be available in the M&A Science Intelligence Hub for members. Non-members can register to attend live.
What if I can't attend live?
Register anyway. The recording will be available through the Intelligence Hub. Intelligence Hub members get access before public release.
What is the M&A Science Intelligence Hub?
The Intelligence Hub is M&A Science's membership platform- Buyer-Led M&A™ playbooks, practitioner frameworks, downloadable artifacts, and early podcast access, all in one place. Built for deal leaders who need tools they can actually use. $995/year at mascience.com/membership.