“It will bring huge profits to investors if it is successful,” he said, adding that it will take at least one to two years to sell vision funds after listing.”It is known that Son Jung-eui leaves advice to the outside and does not engage in deliberation.
Japan’s Softbank is negotiating with Vision Fund to acquire the remaining stake in British semiconductor designer Arm. Japan’s Softbank is said to be negotiating with Vision Fund to acquire the remaining stake in British semiconductor designer Arm. It is known that Samsung of Korea also expressed its intention to acquire Softbank several times. Softbank is in negotiations to acquire a 25% stake in ARM held by Vision Fund 1, a venture capital fund it operates. Currently, ARM’s stake is divided into 75% of Softbank and 25% of Vision Fund.The negotiations come as SoftBank is currently preparing to list ARM on the Nasdaq sometime next month. The market capitalization is expected to reach $60 billion to $70 billion. Once the negotiations are completed, Softbank expects to give huge profits to investors in Vision Fund 1, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIE) and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala.Until now, Vision Fund 1 has suffered huge losses due to failed investments in companies such as WeWork, a shared office company, and Didi Chuxing, a vehicle-sharing company.The acquisition appears to have been made in consideration of the possibility that the plan to sell ARM shares in the market after the IPO will take at least one to two years considering the size of the stake and that the stock will fall after the listing. Softbank Chairman Son Jung-eui said he is currently consulting external investment bank Rain Group and is not participating in related deliberations.In addition, the acquisition price under discussion between the two sides is not known, and there is a possibility that the negotiations may fail.Another source said that if negotiations take place, Softbank could hold about 85 to 90% of its stake by reducing the size of the sale of its stake in ARM at the time of IPO. Softbank acquired ARM for $32 billion in 2016. ARM is a British company that designs application processors (APs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) for smartphones and holds related patents.
SOPHIA KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
