Any one of a number of legal structures under which a company can participate in the foreign economy. FIEs tend to have tight government regulation at nearly every important business juncture, which limits the efficiency at which any foreign company can profit from foreign ventures as well as the amount of control that a foreign parent has over the FIE.

|||Setting up an FIE is a common method of creating an operation in Asian countries, especially in China. In China, any one of a number of legal entities can be considered FIEs including equity joint ventures (EJV), cooperative joint ventures (CJV), wholly-owned foreign enterprises (WFOE) and foreign-invested companies limited by shares (FCLS).