Boris Johnson, UK Prime Minister, has joined the final push to convince SoftBank Group Corp chip designer Arm to list on London’s stock exchange, according to the Financial Times, which quoted people familiar with the matter.
Johnson wrote to SoftBank executives in a last-ditch effort to convince them to reconsider their preference to list in New York, according to the report.
Arm refused to comment, while SoftBank and the LSE did not immediately reply to Reuters’ requests. The office of the prime minister could not immediately be reached.
According to the report, Chris Philp, the digital minister, and Gerry Grimstone (Minister for Investment), are expected to meet SoftBank executives over the next few weeks.
Two people who are familiar with SoftBank’s thinking stated that there was little chance of SoftBank changing its plans and listing in London.
SoftBank decided to list Arm Ltd instead of selling it to Nvidia Corp, the U.S. chipmaker, in February. The reason was regulatory hurdles.
(Reporting by Anirudh Saligrama and Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; editing done by Richard Pullin, Uttaresh.V).
