The British government intervenes in the acquisition of NVIDIA's Arm, which has moved about 4.2 trillion yen, because of 'national security concerns'

by htomari

The British government announced on April 19 local time that it had intervened in the acquisition of Arm by NVIDIA because of 'national security concerns' and made an acquisition transaction with the executive body, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Revealed that he had ordered an investigation into.

Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA Corporation: public interest intervention --GOV.UK
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proposed-acquisition-of-arm-limited-by-nvidia-corporation-public-interest-intervention

Digital Secretary instructs CMA to look into NVIDIA's takeover of ARM --GOV.UK
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/digital-secretary-instructs-cma-to-look-into-nvidias-takeover-of-arm

UK invokes national security to investigate Nvidia's ARM deal | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-intervenes-nvidias-takeover-arm-national-security-grounds-2021-04-19/

Arm is a British semiconductor design company known for its Arm architecture. It was reported that the SoftBank Group acquired Arm in 2016, but is considering selling it in July 2020.

Softbank considers selling Arm-GIGAZINE

by MIKI Yoshihito

Arm was acquired by NVIDIA, an American company that develops chips such as GPUs and SoCs. In September 2020, NVIDIA announced that it had reached an agreement with SoftBank at a transaction price of up to $ 400 billion.

Softbank sells Arm to NVIDIA for about 4.2 trillion yen-GIGAZINE

Regarding the deal, Arm co-founder Hermann Hauser sent a letter to the House of Commons' Foreign Affairs Committee expressing concern that 'NVIDIA's acquisition of Arm will create a technology monopoly.'

'NVIDIA's acquisition of Arm will create a technology monopoly,' said Arm co-founder-GIGAZINE

In addition, Chinese tech companies are reportedly working to prevent NVIDIA from acquiring Arm, saying that the acquisition of Arm by an American company will make it difficult to adopt the Arm architecture.

Chinese tech companies such as Huawei express strong concern following NVIDIA's acquisition of Arm-GIGAZINE

by NVIDIA Corporation

The CMA has already investigated in January 2021 whether Arm will withdraw or raise its intellectual property licenses against NVIDIA competitors in light of its impact on market competition in the United Kingdom. It was reported .

'As a result of careful consideration of the acquisition of Arm, I issued an intervention notice today for national security reasons. We are prosperous,' said Minister Dauden about the sale of Arm from Softbank to NVIDIA. We would like to support the British technology industry and welcome foreign investment, but the impact of such transactions on national security should be considered accordingly. ' This time, it was revealed that the investigation of the Arm acquisition transaction will be conducted with the official intervention of the British government.

In addition, Minister Dauden said, 'As a next step and to gather relevant information, the UK CMA will prepare a report on the impact of this transaction and will make decisions based on that report. I'm going. '

'We don't believe our deal will hurt national security,' NVIDIA said. 'We will continue to work closely with the UK authorities, as we have done since the announcement of this deal.' I commented.