It's official! Arm files for IPO on Nasdaq

Arm on Monday publicly filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq stock market, under the ticker ARM. While the British chip designer has has filed to become a public traded company once again, it will likely remain under majority control of Japanese parent SoftBank. In a statement today, Arm did not reveal the …

[pimppetgaeghsr]

Only way this is worth Masa's imaginary price tag is if the big players buy in to ensure some sort of control at a high premium. With some of those named wanting cheaper licenses or less competition you just wonder what is going to happen. The softbank era well and truly destroyed the founder culture that made it great and made it more American, much like IBM, Qualcomm or Intel and I don't mean in a good way.

[bazza]

Well I think if Apple, Samsung, Amazon etc bought stakes and then charged only themselves less in license fees, that'd attract considerable antitrust action from various governments. It would be a cartel.

I'm not sure what you mean by the founder culture. Acorn only ever set up ARM to generate more value. The sharholders who sold out to Softbank would have been nuts to refuse such a generous offer. There has never been anything truly altruistic about ARM. They have simply been good at being incredibly useful whilst not taking the piss on licence costs.

[pimppetgaeghsr]

The founder culture was part of what made ARM the sort of company that cared about its employees, like shelling out more stock and less bonuses in 2008 to avoid layoffs which minted a few millionaires in the engineering ranks. Unheard of these days.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess, from your extensive history of disgruntled posts any time ARM is mentioned, you were one of the the lay-offs which wasn't avoided.

[Charlie Clark]

When was the last time the US bothered about cartels? Electricity market? Nope. Rail freight? Nope. Telephony? Nope. Content Creation? Nope. Airlines? Nope (and you have two-way cartels there because of the monopsody of the owners).

ARM already effectively as a cartel but it could be argued that the open licence model is an example of a well-managed cartel industry body as opposed to say MPLA or the USB consortium and the rest.

[Charlie Clark]

Unless Softbank is prepared to offer a majority stake, I don't see the big players biting. What Son maybe hoping for is private equity and hedge funds willing to bet that they'll be more successful with the same trick.

The risk is that, in order to keep the price high, he offers too little stock for anyone to want it. Post-launch prices and volumes will probably be a good indication as to whether more sales will follow.

[UK Jim]

Initial Public Offeting!?

<pedantry>

As your article even states in the same sentence in which it says this is an Initial Public Offering, it is not, since Arm was previously listed!

Or are we allowed to claim that every time we do something it is the first time?

</pedantry>

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Initial Public Offeting!?

An IPO is a technical process for a company going public. It was designed in the time before the private equity / IPO merrygoround started.

[Charlie Clark]

This year's award for creative accounting goes to…

Masayoushi Son!