UK Government to initiate talks with Softbank in final attempt to have Arm listed in London

The UK government still believes it can convince Softbank to have Arm listed on both the New York Stock Exchange and London Exchange. According to the latest reports, once the official mourning period for the queen is officially over UK Prime Minister Liz Truss and chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng will sit down with the needle movers at Softbank to try and negotiate a deal.

Softbank, who had agreed to sell Arm to Nvidia for $66 billion, has decided to take its shares public again after the deal fell through due to regulatory issues. Competing chipmakers aired their concern to competition watchdogs in the EU, US, UK and China about the implications of an Nvidia-Arm acquisition to the industry.

Previous efforts by the UK government to have Arm listed on the London exchange were led by Lord Gerry Grimstone but he left the government after the resignation of former PM Boris Johnson leaving the project unfinished.

PM Truss will be hoping for the same level of success with this new project as she had created new pork and cheese markets for UK farmers.

At the moment, Softbank is more interested in getting listed on the NYSE since historically, businesses tend to get a higher valuation when they float there.

Another entity that will love to see Arm listed on the London exchange is Union Unite. The trade union’s major concern is an NYSE-only listing may see Arm global headquarters move to the US leading to the loss of jobs in the country.

“Unite Cambridge Engineering branch supports the proposals for a joint listing of Arm on the London Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ in New York," a spokesman for the union was quoted saying. "We would be concerned for the long-term future of the company's global HQ remaining in Cambridge if Arm lists exclusively in the USA and we will always fight to defend our members’ jobs in Cambridge."

Arm’s fiscal year 2023 was off to a good start as the company booked record revenues for Q1 ending June 30th. For the three months, Arm reported a turnover of $719 million which represents a 6% increase from the same period in 2021.