LSE boss vows to fight hard in battle to secure Arm flotation

THE boss of the London Stock Exchange said it is still lobbying hard for Arm to list its shares in the UK.

The British chip designer’s Japanese owner SoftBank has temporarily put talks about floating the company in London on hold – sparking speculation the City will miss out and it will instead go public in New York.

Political turmoil in Westminster has been cited though the Mail understands difficulties in organising such an ambitious dual-listing are at the heart of the problem.

LSE chief executive Julia Hoggett insisted the exchange was still working on bringing Arm to London. ‘I want to win every single offering that I can do and I also feel very strongly there is a very compelling case for Arm to have a dual premium listing in the UK,’ she told Bloomberg Television.

‘We’ve been working very hard. We should absolutely fight for anything that we think we have a compelling strategy to propose.’

Arm, which is based in Cambridge and designs chips used in everything from smartphones to supercomputers, was listed in London and New York before it was bought by SoftBank in 2016.

SoftBank tried to sell it to US chip maker Nvidia for £30bn but the deal fell through amid opposition from regulators around the world.