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ARM founder says Softbank deal is 'sad day' for UK tech
- stuaxo 10y agoNot sure what will hap happen, the ways of running businesses in both countries are very different and not really compatible often.
- petrikapu 10y agoIs this all because of brexit or why to sell such successful business?
- glenndebacker 10y agoSeeing how the pound has fallen, I think it's cheaper for foreign investors to buy Britisch companies. That is a bit ironic if you keep the surge of nationalism in mind.
- grabcocque 10y agoBrexit was partly about the EU's sclerotic lack of democracy and partly about failure to control immigration. Since this touches neither of those, I don't see the irony.
- Xiol 10y agoExcept the EU isn't undemocratic and immigration is good the economy.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago> "Except the EU isn't undemocratic" What gives you that impression?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jerven 10y agoIf you call the UK a democracy then yes the EU is very democratic. Also assuming whitehall will produce less redtape than brussels is probably not going to be true :(
- ZenoArrow 10y ago> "If you call the UK a democracy then yes the EU is very democratic." Explain.
- ionised 10y agoIt's a plutocracy. Has been for hundreds of years. The UK has an unlected upper House of Lords. It has a monarch that technically still has a lot of power, even if it isn't excercised. London is the primary focus of the country's expenditure and may as well be a city state. The City of London, an entity unto itself is rife with fraud and corruption on a global scale, and essentially owns our politicians, much like Goldman Sachs basically owns the US government.
- jerven 10y agoPlus the way that districts for the house of commons operate... leading to a less than representative commons.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago> "It's a plutocracy. Has been for hundreds of years. > "The UK has an unlected upper House of Lords." The balance of power has shifted in those 'hundreds of years'. The House of Lords no longer has the same level of power it did 200 years ago. The Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 shifted the bulk of the power for law making to the House of Commons. If you're not familiar with these bills, I recommend taking a look... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_Act_1911 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_Act_1911 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_Act_1949 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_Act_1949 > "It has a monarch that technically still has a lot of power, even if it isn't excercised." The moment the Monarch tries to exercise that power is the moment the Monarch seals their fate, as dissolution of the monarchy would almost inevitably follow soon after. I'd hardly call that 'power'. > "London is the primary focus of the country's expenditure and may as well be a city state." I agree that spending in London is disproportionately high compared to the rest of the country. However, it's worth remembering how big a part of the UK that London is. The population of Greater London is roughly 9.8 million. The population of the UK as a whole is roughly 64.1 million. Therefore, approximately 15% of everyone in the UK lives in London/Greater London. To put that in perspective, that's more people than live in the next 6 largest urban areas combined (Greater Manchester, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Greater Glasgow, Liverpool, South Hampshire). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_Uni... There are signs that UK public spending outside London will be improving. At the moment public spending in the UK is guided by the Barnett formula, which even the author himself admits was a 'terrible mistake'... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_formula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_formula > "The City of London, an entity unto itself is rife with fraud and corruption on a global scale, and essentially owns our politicians, much like Goldman Sachs basically owns the US government." The City of London is rife with fraud and corruption, but that's no argument for the EU, which is equally in bed with big business. The lobbying industry for the EU is massive, second only to the US. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/08/lobbyists-european-parliament-brussels-corporate https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/08/lobbyists-euro...
- mattmanser 10y agoHaha, what EU are you talking about? When did you vote for Juncker or anyone else on the commission? The commission where all the power of the EU is concentrated? It's got better than when it was at its worst, but the EU is still incredibly undemocratic and unaccountable for a Western institution. And let's not even start on how Germany suddenly seem to be in control of the Euro and seem to be essentially dictating monetary policy in Greece, Italy and Spain.
- toyg 10y ago> When did you vote for Juncker Juncker was the PPE candidate before the last round of EU elections. A majority of EU citizens voted PPE-member parties, so Juncker was elected Commission President. That's democracy in my book. All major European parties had a CP candidate going in the election, although only two had a realistic shot (Juncker for PPE and Martin Schulz for PSE); if you voted for Labour in UK, you voted for Schulz -- who is now President of the European Parliament btw, following a common European convention where opposition leaders are given oversight roles. That's real democracy in action IMHO. > commission where all the power of the EU is concentrated Was concentrated, pre-2009. The Commission now sets the legislative agenda, but Parliament has final say including veto. > the EU is still incredibly undemocratic and unaccountable Considering the institutions typically taking flak (Commission and Council) are direct emanation of national governments, I'd say the responsibility for that sits directly with national governments and their voters. Besides, if you don't like the fact that you "didn't vote for Juncker", you should be happy that Commission and Council will always include a representation from your country, no matter what anyone votes for, and it's usually on the topic that is of most interest to your country. > Germany suddenly seem to be in control of the Euro That's the real problem (which doesn't really affect the UK, but certainly the EU as a whole suffers from it). Everything else is a detail.
- jankor 10y agoJuncker was a leader of the party that won European Parliament elections. The rest of the commission is appointed by the elected Parliament as well. Let's compare this to let's say House of Lords. Germany was the main opponent of lowering the interest rate to 0 and launching QE, they obviously failed, no Germany is not suddenly in control of the Euro. I am myself not a big proponent of the EU, but let's keep criticism where it's due and don't raise conspiracies about sudden german control of the Euro.
- vixen99 10y agoDemocracy in the EU? In 2011, the elected prime ministers of Italy and Greece were toppled in Brussels-backed coups. EU civil servants then pursued economic policies that would have been rejected at the ballot box. Note the response of the EU when a referendum went against closer integration. This happened in Denmark, France, Ireland and the Netherlands. The vote was either ignored or the electorate told to vote again until they got it 'right'. We see the same mindset at work with folk who want a second referendum for Brexit.
- vixen99 10y agoNoam Chomsky explains the EU's democracy deficit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPbXWB0X1UQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPbXWB0X1UQ
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago>EU civil servants then pursued economic policies that would have been rejected at the ballot box. // Which seems exactly like the measure of democracy we have in the UK, no?
- cronjobber 10y agoYour points are technically true, but neither informs on whether Brexit happened over questions regarding sovereignty and immigration. Such questions obviously mattered and "the economy" (whatever and whoever that is) isn't the only concern of sovereign states. You could argue that in a democratic capitalist market economy, government should concern itself predominantly with non-economic concerns of the people over economic welfare of its billionaire class. This ideal isn't always matched by reality, of course.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago>Such questions obviously mattered // In fact they mattered so much the the leave campaign flagrantly perjured themselves to convince the voters of a false reality in order to get the vote they wanted. Democracy! It ain't what it used to be. All the sovereign baloney bothers me too - I'm not better off as a lowly nobody that in having the Queen and PM May holding the sovereign power over me than I was having the relatively socialist EU powers over me, whether they were elected or not. I really don't get the argument beyond it being used as a veil for racism or a desire to return to The Empire.
- glenndebacker 10y ago"Brexit was partly about the EU's sclerotic lack of democracy" Oh please, first lookup what a (representative) democracy is and how the European commission and parlement works before shouting nonsens. I'm not particularly somebody who find that everything the EU does is good, but I have also seen my part of BS regarding how it works. If I remember it correctly what I have been reading, but it doesn't differ that much with a lot of political structures in Britain. Or is the UK also undemocratic ? "and partly about failure to control immigration" Which is also a nationalisme agenda ergo the reason why the Brexit supporters at the European mainland (Front National, Vlaams Belang, PVV, ...) are nationalist parties. Not to say xenophobic. That is another thing that is very ironic, it's all about democracy but then they look for support (at the continent) to parties which are only democratic when you are white. Because that are the parties some of you are investing your hopes in. You can't deny that nationalisme ideas (a lot of elderly voted with some reminiscence to the days there was still something like the British empire) has also driven that agenda ergo it is quite ironic that it created a situation where the crown jewels could be picked cheaply by foreigners. Even if you read the article in question you can see the same theme's (independence, ...) repeating...
- pjc50 10y agoAs opposed to the UK's sclerotic FPTP system and unelected legislature?
- imtringued 10y agoExcept most immigrants come from outside the EU. http://qz.com/697783/most-migrants-to-the-uk-actually-come-from-outside-europe/ http://qz.com/697783/most-migrants-to-the-uk-actually-come-f...
- lucaspiller 10y agoIf there are any US investors looking to get into the UK healthcare market, I'm sure you can get a good deal on the NHS if you ask nicely...
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- madaxe_again 10y agoYes - brexit has freed Britain from the shackles of evil, meaning that now wonderful things like this can happen
- ed_blackburn 10y agoCan anyone express in none emotional terms what the sale means to UK business?
- edent 10y agoThe UK has seen several large / important companies being taken over in recent years. In nearly all cases it has lead to a reduction in investment, value being extracted from the business and taken overseas, lowered quality, job losses, and - in some cases - the companies collapsing. In addition, with our currency tanking, there is the speculation that our national assets are being picked up too cheaply.
- mSparks 10y agoever declining. As someone who stopped his electronic engineering education in no small part because all the engineering jobs ran away to places like south korea in the 80s and 90s. Now the guarantee that the uk will join ttip since uk elites are all for it and they dont have the eu technocrats slowing them down. The only jobs left in that hell hole of a country I was born in will literally be call centers and shop floor retail. Yup. just a sad day in a long list of sad days.
- venomsnake 10y agoWell you did had Toni Blair working as Louis Vutton salesman post his Prime Minister days ...
- caoilte 10y agoWe still do a nice line in money laundering for African dictators and selling 11tn paperweights to the Saudis if you ever want to return.
- mSparks 10y agoAnd the worst bit of that, that is pretty much the direction (finance) I nearly went when I reassessed my options.... "Funny cause' it's true" springs to mind.
- dandare 10y agoThe sum almost feels low in the light of all the unicorn valuations.
- Nux 10y agoNow that they got their country back, they can sell it off. :-) Probably the lower value of the £ has probably contributed to this, or hastened it.
- grabcocque 10y agoTurns out one of the largest corporate acquisitions in UK corporate history probably took more than a fortnight to put together. But a weaker pound certainly makes the UK are more attractive target for investment.
- sanxiyn 10y ago> the largest corporate acquisition in UK corporate history I think this is BG Group. Edit: The parent edited to "one of the largest". Thanks!
- rmc 10y ago> But a weaker pound certainly makes the UK are more attractive target for investment. If only the UK wasn't going to leave the largest free trade group!
- dawson 10y agoIt didn't, Brexit made it 7% more expensive for SoftBank https://twitter.com/jamestitcomb/status/754966707769315333 https://twitter.com/jamestitcomb/status/754966707769315333
- roel_v 10y agoHow?
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- vidarh 10y agoARMs income is mostly in dollars, and their expenses mostly in pounds. Accordingly if you look at the FTSE100 index, it's moved up about as much as the pound has dropped because a lot of the companies on it will profit from a weaker pound, while if you look at the FTSE250, which includes a large number of companies with income predominantly in pounds, it's down.
- grabcocque 10y agoProbably should have thought of that before he ran ARM into the ground the first time and sought foreign bailouts. Under his leadership, "sad days" included sizable foreign investments from Olivetti, Apple and GEC.
- neximo64 10y agoIn each of those not entirely relinquishing control.
- ClashTheBunny 10y agoHow so if the company can be bought today without his consent?
- _Codemonkeyism 10y agoThis.
- mijoharas 10y agoI don't think he's been involved in the company for more than a decade[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hauser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hauser
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- mijoharas 10y agoI think there is a difference between raising capital through investment and selling the business. I'm not sure that the term "bailout" is appropriate here either.
- ProfChronos 10y agoInteresting timing: we have the same debate rising up in France with the acquisition of Medtech (Rosa medical robots) by Zimmer Biomet [1]. CEO and founder, Bertin Nahum, said he had to sell as he couldn't find the right funding in FR/EU. Real shame and also a sad day for France (med)tech [1]http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSFWN1A40EO http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSFWN1A40EO
- demonshalo 10y agoIt's simple. Europe has no money. The middle class has no savings and the investment sector is far too regulated, confined and incapable of looking at a multi-year timescale.
- ProfChronos 10y ago"The middle class has no savings" => France saving ratio is 15% vs 5% in the US, so that's definitely not the point.
- toyg 10y agoThe investment sector is simply too conservative, for historical and cultural reasons. Regulation is mostly an excuse, a fig leaf for a spiritually-bankrupt upper class.
- Brakenshire 10y agoThe English Upper Class does have a long and storied tradition of rent-seeking. If you can extract so much value out of something like housing, it's difficult to see why you would get involved in anything risky and technical.
- roel_v 10y agoWhy is real estate investing 'rent-seeking' and buying a tech company an 'investment'?
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- cleeus 10y agoaha, they intend to keep the ARM HQ in the UK. Well ... let's see what they say in 10 years because you know, once a company is sold, the buyer can do whatever the fuck he wants with the thing he just bought.
- grabcocque 10y agoDo you know who owned ARM before? It certainly wasn't some nebulous cloud named "Britain". It was mostly large institutional investors in the US. You don't buy a company the size of ARM at such enormous expense intending to ruin it.
- snom380 10y agoRuining it is never the _intention_, but it happens often enough that people are right to worry when a company gets bought out.
- nul_byte 10y agoThe timezone differences are going to be an issue. We have a couple of Japanese guys in the same team as me, and its tough going. We have a small window in the morning to align on projects and if we ever need to do face to face meetings, we are all reluctant as its a killer long haul flight where you're guaranteed three days of jet lag.
- nandemo 10y agoTrue, but Japanese companies aren't prone to ruin foreign companies they've acquired by relocating the HQ to Japan. They do so by bringing Japan into the foreign HQ, i.e. the acquiree's top execs are replaced by the acquirer's execs.
- shimon_e 10y agoDon't underestimate humanity's ability to ruin things. :D
- Xiol 10y agoSee also: Cadbury's. Fuck you, Kraft.
- sohkamyung 10y agoIsn't it a bit of a stretch for Hermann Houser to say ARM 'sold' 15 billion chips last year and compares ARM to Intel? Technically it was ARM licensees that sold those chips, not ARM. Quote from the article: "The man [Hermann Hauser] who helped spin ARM Holdings out from Acorn Computers in 1990 also said the technology firm had sold 15 billion microchips in 2015, which was more than US rival Intel had sold in its history."
- greenspot 10y agoSelling licensees is even smarter than selling chips, no risk and probably same margin.
- Scaevolus 10y agoIn 2015, Intel paid out more in stock dividends (~$4,500M) than ARM Holdings made in revenue ($1,489M).
- j1vms 10y agoWhich, as I understand it, means that in 2015, Intel was probably at least two orders of magnitude more profitable than ARM Holdings. GP could still be right about margins, but as a shareholder, Intel would bave been much more preferable.
- dharma1 10y agoHow long can Intel retain those profit margins though? ARM processors are the de facto architecture for mobile and IoT - as mobile processors get more powerful and more desktop class software becomes available on mobile devices, Intel's profitability is seriously threatened.
- jabl 10y agoYou could make the same argument about arm too, for that matter. Why pay for an arm license if you can get an equivalent risc-v chip (rtl, "soft core" or whatever it is that you get when you buy an arm license) for free? Well, not at the moment but in a few years when risc-v has matured a bit more..
- fit2rule 10y agoI wonder now if Softbank/Japan is going to be brought into the "five-eyes" agreements somehow, now that they'll have control over all the ARM processors we'll be using on the planet, and thus will also inherit all the backdoors put there for that bastion of British Pride, the GCHQ ..
- gonzo 10y agoKnew before clicking that it would be "Herman the German"
- gonzo 10y agoDownvoted by people who weren't there...
- mijoharas 10y agoI would assume people downvoted because your comment didn't add anything of any value, and comes off as sounding quite racist. (In addition, he's austrian[0]) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hauser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hauser
- gonzo 10y agoI know he's Austrian, and I can't help that it sounds "quite racist". It's how people referred to him at Acorn, then ARM. I worked with a number of them at Tadpole during the early-mid 90s, and got to meet Hauser once, at the Oveletti lab.
- cm3 10y agoAnd in Germany minister Gabriel is trying to find a European buyer, while the Chinese Midea makes offers to buy Kuka Robotics. Somehow I have the feeling that the minister doesn't realize that Midea already owns 76% of Kuka's shares. In a global economy, is it really a risk for already global companies to be owned by someone who isn't in said company's original HQ nation? What difference does it make, given that the whole operation is already distributed over the globe? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-02/midea-touts-kuka-robot-maker-deal-as-offer-hits-german-barrier-ioxs71nb http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-02/midea-tout... http://www.reuters.com/article/us-kuka-midea-group-stake-idUSKCN0ZV0Z4 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-kuka-midea-group-stake-idU...
- foepys 10y agoYes, but as far as I know, Midea offered to buy Kuka's stocks for 115€ per share instead of 8€ that they were worth at the time and increased it's stake from 16% to 76% this way.
- cm3 10y agoYeah, given that Kuka already has a subsidiary in China and that Midea owns 76%, I don't know what exactly would change when it's fully owned by Midea.
- lispm 10y agoThe intellectual property...
- matco11 10y agoGerman corporate governance laws require a parent company to operate at arms-length for ownership levels between 50%+1 and 95%. This means no changes of management allowed, no revenue synergies, no cost synergies. By acquiring the remaining shares, they would be allowed to take actual control.
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- petercooper 10y agoA complaint I've seen about the UK's tech scene is that it can't be like Silicon Valley because there haven't been enough acquisitions to spread the wealth and encourage further and more diverse investment. But now there's an acquisition, people are moaning :-D
- amelius 10y agoThat may be because the wealth is spreading elsewhere ...
- new299 10y agoRight, but this acquisition was post-IPO. The kind of ecosystem people might want to see is larger companies (like ARM) acquiring smaller UK startups. This is not a startup acquisition, and unlikely to fuel further startups.
- tiatia 10y agoWhy a sad day? The UK has lost most of it's industrial base and the oil, that fueled the rise of the UK under Thatcher, runs out. Last thing I heard is that they want to make a free trade zone with China. So they wouldn't really need whats left of the industrial base anyway. Probably they are trying to become an offshore business center with decent money laundering services.
- niravseo 10y agoThe sum almost feels low in the light of all the unicorn valuations.
- kazinator 10y agoThat's nothing compared to all of 7-Eleven being Japanese owned. Also, Sapporo owns Canada's Okanagan Springs beer brewery. :)
- fazkan 10y agoI dont know if its a "sad day", softbank is a smart company, look at its growth.. Plus I think they would finally make something of ARM holdings perhaps start creating their own SOCs and a suite of software applications. Their compilers are still not mainstream so with the bigger bucks perhaps they could push them....
- ionwake 10y agoTo think 2 weeks ago I was put forward there for an interview, and I just heard back that they are outsourcing it to a different team... I can't help but feel this is not coincidental, and that I probably won't be hearing about any new roles any time soon.
- imtringued 10y agoI would like to see some ARM chips that are competitive with x86 even if that still means they are only put in Chromebooks. The Tegra X1 is quite interesting but the dev board is too expensive for me ($599). It's kind of ironic that AMD's x86 cpus are actually the cheapest choice if you want relatively high performance because that is one of the big selling points of ARM.
- phkahler 10y ago>> I would like to see some ARM chips that are competitive with x86 even if that still means they are only put in Chromebooks. Any word on the AMD K12?
- Symmetry 10y agoDelayed in favor of getting Zen to market earlier but it should still be out next year.
- mijoharas 10y ago> It's kind of ironic that AMD's x86 cpus are actually the cheapest choice if you want relatively high performance because that is one of the big selling points of ARM. I'd disagree that that's the selling point. I'd say ARM's selling points have always been low cost and power efficiency. They have recently started trying to make inroads into the higher performance server market (with their selling point still being power efficiency), but their main market is SOCs. That said, I'd also like to see ARM developing some higher powered chips at a lower price point, it'll be interesting to see how much they start to move into that market.
- honkhonkpants 10y agoI think you meant low cost and low power, not power efficiency. In terms of computation performed per joule used, ARM isn't any better than x86, and is much worse on many workloads. They design their parts at a low power point, but they aren't terribly efficient.
- matco11 10y agoConsidering that 1) the revenue base of ARM is predominantly in USD licensing fees, and 2) that the British pound has lost ~20% against he dollar. The ~41% premium is really a 21% premium. No chance a global leader like ARM could have been snatched for a 21% premium a few weeks ago. Run a list of companies listed in London with predominantly non-GBP revenue base and you have a great list of takeover targets.
- m0llusk 10y agoDeveloping technologies for the future of mankind is not inherently compatible with Nationalism.
- anonbanker 10y agoI'd rather have my ARM devices backdoored by another country than my own (as a FIVE EYES resident). I know this is not a popular choice, but consider the threat profile: if Japan knows my secrets, are they sharing with Britain or Canada? Likely not, as the agreement is not in place. ARM was hamstrung for me and my corporation (Canadian medical marijuana industry) due to its ties to government. With this sale, that is no longer the case. If I could, I'd buy 100% Russian and Chinese (especially gonkai'ed) gear, but that's not feasible yet. Hopefully sooner than later.