“The entire issued and to-be-issued share capital of ARM is now owned by SBG (Softbank Group) and its wholly-owned subsidiaries”, said the Japan-based telco, in a statement. The deal was announced back in July.
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According to TechCrunch, this formal takeover will result in ARM being de-listed from the London Stock Exchange as of 6 September, with SoftBank’s planning to run the ARM company as a standalone business. After less than two months, SoftBank is announcing today that the transaction is complete.
In July, Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank announced its planned acquisition of ARM Holdings, the United Kingdom firm whose processor designs are used in a vast array of devices all over the world. Apart from the fact that it had Softbank and ARM Holdings – both of them major corporations in their respective niches – at either ends, being the biggest tech deal in the United Kingdom, ever, gave it a huge publicity too.
SoftBank is apparently expecting to have ARM bolster its plans regarding the growth of the market for the Internet of Things.
The deal is SoftBank’s largest takeover so far, dwarfing even its $20 billion spend to acquire a majority stake in United States carrier Sprint.
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The company designs processors for consumer electronics brands like Apple and Samsung, and its manufacturing partners shipped almost 15 billion chips past year; more than 50 percent of smartphones available today contain processors running ARM’s latest v8-A architecture. It’s not the first foray that the company has made in a sector that is strictly speaking, not particularly associated to what it does as a telecommunications major. Majority of the people in the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in a referendum, causing the pound to fall by 16 per cent in two weeks. I did not make the investment because of Brexit. ARM shares on the US Nasdaq will be delisted on 12 September. ARM Holdings has been diversifying into IoT these last few years as smartphone sales are beginning to stagnate.
