According to Masayoshi Son, the boss of SoftBank, Wall Street would hold the rope to welcome Arm to the stock market, to the detriment of the London market. A position that does not please the British government.
Arm’s stock market destination becomes clearer. According to Masayoshi Son, the boss of SoftBank, it is the Nasdaq in New York which is the favorite to welcome the British manufacturer of mobile chips on the financial market, to the detriment of London. “Most of Arm’s customers are based in Silicon Valley and US stock markets would love to have it”the strong man of the Japanese conglomerate told shareholders at the annual general meeting of this flagship company in the semiconductor industry.
As a reminder, Arm was already listed in the United Kingdom, with a secondary listing in the United States, before its acquisition by SoftBank in 2016 for 32 billion dollars. In September 2020, the firm was to be the subject of the largest acquisition in history on the electronic components market, when its sale to Nvidia was announced for 40 billion dollars.
As soon as the merger was announced, international regulators did not fail to express their concerns. In their eyes, this operation would have allowed the birth of a titan of semiconductors that could lead to possible abuse of a dominant position. Finally, the operation had been officially abandoned at the beginning of the year.
UK does not want Wall Street listing
To disengage from the British company while making its initial investment profitable, SoftBank has therefore decided to list Arm by March 2023. But if this company takes over the management of Wall Street, the British government could see red and try to block the operation in the name of national security, according to the FinancialTimes.
For the time being, this is only a hypothesis, but seeing a British technological nugget go public on the other side of the Atlantic would be a disappointment for the United Kingdom, and more generally Europe. Indeed, the Old Continent is struggling to retain its most promising start-ups on its stock markets despite 125 additional unicorns in the space of a year (283 in total). Small consolation for Great Britain, SoftBank could consider a secondary listing in London. It would always be taken.