18-July, Tokyo – The Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank announced today their interest to acquire the british semiconductor and software design company ARM, headquartered in Cambridge, England for $32B. This is the first time an investment of this size has been made inside the UK coming from another country after the Brexit referendum has taken place. It could be considered as indication of foreign investors still being interested in UK businesses even after leaving the EU, but the decision to acquire a company of the size of ARM was hardly made over night. It is hard to tell what the future will bring. This won’t become a precedent case.
Next to their latest acquisition in ARM, SoftBank also has a stake in the following organizations:
- SoftBank Corp. (99.99%)
- Sprint Corporation (80%)
- SB Creative
- Yahoo! Japan (~35%)
- GungHo Online Entertainment (58.5%)
- Supercell (75%)
Photo credit: SoftBank Press Conference (18th of July 2016)
Source: Execution of Bridge Loan Agreement for ARM Acquisition / Recommended Acquisition of ARM by SoftBank / ARM Press Release
Editorial notice: The total sum has been corrected from $31B to $32B in this article on 19-July due to an update in the official documentation.
