ARM Holdings shareholders approve SoftBank takeover

SHAREHOLDERS in ARM Holdings overwhelmingly backed SoftBank’s £24.3bn takeover offer yesterday, quelling cries from influential quarters that the deal should be blocked.

Microchip designer ARM, Britain’s biggest technology company, accepted SoftBank’s all-cash offer in July. The deal cleared its final hurdle yesterday afternoon when 95pc of shareholders endorsed the deal at a meeting in central London.

The deal, which is the biggest-ever acquisition of a European technology company, means that ARM will be delisted from the London Stock Exchange by the end of the week, ending the Cambridge-based company’s 18 years as a publicly traded business.

The takeover is expected to complete on September 5, subject to final legal and corporate governance checks.

SoftBank’s owner and chief executive Masayoshi Son has already won Government support for the deal after he made legally binding promises to double ARM’s 1,600-strong UK workforce over the next five years and to keep its headquarters in Cambridge.

The Prime Minister Theresa May and the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, hailed the takeover as proof that Britain is an attractive place to do business, amid lingering concerns over the impact of the Brexit vote.

But City grandee Lord Myners attacked Softbank’s pledges as “not worth the paper they were written on” and called on the Government to reconsider. Lord Myners, who served as Gordon Brown’s financial services minister, queried whether SoftBank would support ARM in a financial downturn.