American retirees are selling their investments, only to be purchased by foreign investors who pose a national security risk

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• Recent reports show that many foreign investors are buying shares in US companies from aging Americans who are increasingly selling their ownership in those companies to fund their retirements.
• Experts argue that this more gradual transfer of control from an aging American population to foreign investors in emerging markets can create national security risks for the United States.
• These economists predict that majority ownership of key US businesses — as well as leading European and Japanese businesses — will be in the hands of foreigners from emerging markets.

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CFIUS, long an acronym recognizable only to a handful of government officials and DC lawyers, has recently managed to steal a few headlines. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the interagency body that reviews foreign purchases of US companies for national security concerns, features heavily in the new conference report for the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. The report proposes overdue reforms, strengthening the US government's ability to scrutinize aggressive efforts by foreign actors to obtain access to sensitive technologies by purchasing US companies, in whole or in part.

But the proposed reforms that will soon make their way to the president's desk miss a crucial, slow-emerging but potentially high-impact question: What happens when foreign investors buy shares in US companies from aging Americans who are increasingly selling their ownership in those companies to fund their retirements? This more gradual transfer of control can create national security risks for the United States that today's emerging discussion of CFIUS has missed entirely.See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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