Despite UK pressure, Masayoshi Son tells SoftBank shareholders that the Nasdaq remains his “favourite” venue for Arm's IPO, but that nothing has been decided
Antoni Slodkowski / Financial Times :
Context & Ripple Effects
Masayoshi Son's answer to shareholders lands midway through a two-year tug-of-war over where Arm lists. After the Nvidia sale collapsed, Son told investors he was planning a US IPO for Arm in March 2023, and this statement doubles down on that preference even as UK pressure builds. The stakes for Britain are old ones: when SoftBank bought Arm, critics argued the UK should at least hold it to commitments like keeping the HQ in Cambridge and doubling staff.
The venue question matters because SoftBank's own recovery is riding on it — the firm's future has been framed as resting on a successful Arm IPO and a turnaround at the mostly dormant Vision Funds. Weeks later, sources reported SoftBank had paused discussions about a London listing amid UK political turmoil, making this shareholder meeting the moment the US tilt first became explicit.
First-order effects
- UK officials lobbying for a home listing get a public signal that the decision-maker prefers Nasdaq, leaving London's pitch dependent on Son's caveat that nothing has been decided.
- SoftBank keeps both options open deliberately, preserving leverage over valuation and listing terms with two governments now competing to host the offering.
Second-order effects
- A sole US listing would concentrate Arm's post-IPO investor base and index inclusion on Nasdaq, weakening the case for the dual-track London-plus-New-York structure SoftBank had been weighing.
- The UK's leverage narrows to non-listing conditions — HQ location and hiring commitments — rather than a share of the flotation itself, shifting what British officials can realistically extract.
Third-order effects
- The episode points to chip designers' listings consolidating in US markets even when their operations and heritage are British, testing whether host-country commitments written at acquisition can substitute for a domestic listing.
- For SoftBank, the pattern reinforces Arm as the asset whose exit must fund the Vision Fund rebuild, making the venue choice a financing decision as much as a political one.
The trend: Semiconductor IPOs are drifting toward sole US listings, with host governments trading listing venues for operational commitments they struggle to enforce.