After pulling off one of the highest-value acquisitions ever in the tech world through its purchase of ARM for $31 billion in September 2016, SoftBank is now looking to sell 25% of the company to a Saudi investment group. The $8 billion stake in ARM is being sold to Vision Fund, a $100 billion technology fund created by SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son. Six months later, SoftBank is in the final-stage talks towards conclusion of the sale.
This seems like an overly fast negotiation time towards the selling of such a large stake on ARM – especially considering the companies’ increasing importance in the technology sector. ARM designs power more than 90% of the world’s smartphones, and recent announcements of companies such as Microsoft in increasing ARM’s presence in the server space point only to increased growth of the company. A sale in this state of affairs (and with such admittedly little information) seems a little… untimely.
Source: Techspot, New York Times
