SoftBank To Buy ARM Holdings For $31 Bln — FT

(SFTBF.PK) has agreed to acquire UK-based chipmaker ARM Holdings plc (ARMH,ARM.L) for 23.4 billion pounds, or $31 billion, the Financial Times reported Monday, citing two people familiar with the negotiations.

The New York Times was the first outlet to report the news of the deal, while The Financial Times was the first to provide financing deals. ARM’s success in mobile made it a major threat to Intel, which has been largely shut out of the mobile chip market.

An agreement could be announced as soon as Monday, reports specified. He said he wanted to develop Sprint and complete the transformation of SoftBank into an internet investment powerhouse.

ARM was spun out of the iconic Acorn in Cambridge in November 1990 and supplies chips to all the world’s leading tech innovators, including Samsung, Apple and Huawei – all three of whom now have a Cambridge presence following acquisitions of their own.

The deal also comes just weeks after Britain voted to leave the European Union, battering sterling and bolstering the yen.

Though it has warned on the staffing impact of Brexit, ARM Holdings’ revenues are largely in dollars and it has a diverse portfolio of technologies it licenses.

This represents a almost 43 percent premium to ARM’s closing stock price of 11.89 pounds on Friday.

The Japanese market was closed on July 18 for a national holiday.