There has been a lot of speculation about the future of British chip designer ARM after NVIDIA's deal to acquire the company fell through due to anti-trust concerns. Japan's Softbank owns ARM and it has since been considering several options including an IPO.
The other option is to put together a consortium of the industry's biggest players to take a stake in ARM. That would include Samsung Electronics as well. However, after a highly anticipated meeting between Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son and Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, it appears that Samsung will be holding on to its cash for now.
Softbank is now preparing to take ARM public
Prior to his visit to South Korea, Son said that “I’d like to talk with Samsung about a strategic alliance with ARM.” It's not necessary that this alliance would require Samsung to make an investment of some sort. There are many areas in which the two companies can collaborate, as they have done for years.
Perhaps this was all that was discussed during the meeting. South Korea's JoongAng paper reports that no offer was made to Samsung to either purchase a stake in ARM or to make a pre-IPO investment. The meeting was also attended by Rene Haas, the CEO of ARM. That's not to say that an offer may not be extended at any point in the future.
It remains to be seen whether the much-rumored consortium will even be put together. Recent reports have suggested that Softbank is now preparing to take ARM public, with New York being the preferred listing destination. However, the UK government is apparently interested in having ARM listed in London. So there may be some hoops yet for Softbank to jump before it can sell some of its shares in ARM to the public.
Softbank has indicated that despite taking the company public, it intends to maintain a majority stake in ARM, thereby continuing to exercise control over this crucial company.
