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ARM was built by decent men – Robin Saxby, Hermann Hauser, Warren East and others of that ilk. It succeeded because of trust. ARM’s customers trusted these men to deliver microprocessors on an impartial basis showing favour to no one.
From now on, the big decisions at ARM will be made in Tokyo.
A Chairman appointed from outside the industry has worked with City investors and Goldman Sachs to deliver ARM to a telecoms company which is the 62nd largest corporation in the world.
Will customers retain their trust?
ARM’s mobile customers will stick with ARM – they have no choice. But where customers have a choice, e.g. in IoT, the competitive position of other cores like MIPS, OpenRISC and RISC-V will be strengthened.
Meanwhile, hopefully, someone will explain to our new Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer that a gung-ho tally-ho attitude to a pillar of the UK’s technology being flogged off abroad is inappropriate.
This is a tragedy.
I suppose that the only thing that can be said in defence of May and Hammond is that they were playing to a bigger audience – the audience of world opinion – at a time when everyone was thinking what does Brexit mean for the world economy, Roy Gardiner. But, as you say, a complete reversal of May’s earlier position, and a totally cretinous statement from Hammond
Well said, Mr. Manners. I agree entirely.
I was gob-smacked that Mrs. May approved this: it seems to exactly contradict the statement she made days earlier. Likewise, the Chancellor’s comments were cretinous: I found them an insult to my intelligence. They just seem to have a different vision, a different ambition to the likes of us.
Yes FirmwareCoder, but Jaguar/Landrover are a manufacturing company selling to consumers, and ARM is a licensing company – licensing its IP to manufacturers. The success of the ARM business model depends on the trust which its licensees retain in ARM. For the last 26 years ARM has earned and retained that trust. A change of ownership doesn’t necessarily mean it will lose that trust, but SoftBank will have to work to persuade new licensees that it can be trusted.
Foreign ownership seems to have worked well for Jaguar Land Rover?
Sounds about right Bitter, after all it took the Black Death to get a rise in workers’ wages in medieval times,
Yes Fred for ‘stupid people’ read all people (mostly financial types) who think all businesses are the same. ARM had a unique business model built on unusual levels of trust which may now be scuppered
In an industry and a world where growth is stalled, Bitter, the only role for managers is cost-cutting and cost-cutters are never heroes.
Well, it is a finite planet after all. Growth eventually have to give.
A lack of growth combined with capitalism and AI advancements -> Fewer plebs are needed to keep the technomachinery cranking along. -> a deflationary death spiral until the new equilibrium point.
Rough seas ahead..
Yes the service industry delusion took hold in Thatcher’ time, SEPAM. One of the things one can credit Arnie Weinstock with was that he regarded it as ridiculous asking something like: “What are all these service industries going to service?”. So Arnie and the Germans were right and, as so often, conventional opinion was disastrously wrong.
Yes indeed, migry, no one can forget ST and Yes, you’re right. management consultants have to suggest something and managements have to show they’re doing something, so at one time all the sheep say vertically integrate and the next time they say focus on core competence. My old company, a publishing company, once bought forests, saw mills and printing works in the interest of verticalisation – for a newspaper and magazine company! There’s nothing so crazy as a manager in pursuit of a fashionable shibboleth.
What is bewildering is the absence of real managers in the corporate landscape. No, I’m not talking about those totally redundant careerist cronies in the multinationals. It is indeed a rare occurrence to be able to work with a “real” manager – You know the type who is busy getting sh1t done and helping out for real.
Yes indeed Fred and here lies a problem – if people are too ill-educated to pass judgment on anything except the simplest issues then there’s an argument for abandoning democracy.
David, I agree, but when you try and explain this to stupid people, they just won’t listen.
Yes zeitghost, up until about 5 years ago, that was the view of Harvard Business School and then it suddenly changed tack and decided that home-grown manufacturing skills were very important. With 70% of the silicon foundry business in Asia, we’re increasingly realising how important manufacturing is in the chip business. Luckily we’ve still got GloFo and Imec to maintain Western manufacturing expertise.
Don’t forget ST. How could anyone forget ST :-), with a fab based in Europe.
This is another thing that amuses me about the so-called experts. I have another word for them…
It all seems to be a fashion. Divest, concentrate on your core business. Then 10 years later, it’s important to have a wide portfolio. The another 10 years later, it’s back to core business strategy and sell off all the other stuff that you were advised to buy in order to have a wide portfolio. Oh yes these so called experts charge an arm and a leg for this “advice”.
I guess it’s all about fashion. It’s the same with football. We must play the Spanish style tica-tacky (or whatever it is called), but now this is falling out of fashion since Spain where dumped out of the Euros.
It is very odd SEPAM. You’d think that reservations about ‘going into trade’ were long gone. But maybe not – although everything else – finance, the professions etc – depends on it.
I remember seeing some financial genius or other on the tv some 30 odd years ago, spouting his theory that we don’t need manufacturing in this country since “who on earth wants to make things”.
Or words to that effect.
He & his like have successfully achieved that.
It wold seem Thatcher was rather persuaded by such advice.
Statements like “who on earth wants to make things” makes me suspect they had a rather sad childhood.
Germany took a very different approach and it is interesting to see how their priorities differ: technology is actually prestigious, many have double doctorates and trades and crafts are also respectable and really well developed.
On the other hand, migry, I would be surprised if no members of your family used Google, Facebook and Amazon.
Yes indeed, Concerned of Norwich, the City boys are absolutely ruthless when they sniff cash – they’ll sell you out with no thought of the national interest. That’s where government should step in. If you want to keep control of your business, stay private like Virgin, and keep clear of the public markets.
An excellent notion DontAgree that would really show how keen people are to invest in the post-Brexit British economy
The wholesale disposal of our leading technology companies has over the years weakened our long term survival and destroyed our manufacturing capability for short term gains. Mrs May needs to stop this before we sell all the family jewels off to the highest bidder.
Will the last one out the door please turn the lights off……………………….
Oh Yes Arnie was a bit of a philistine when it came to technology, SEPAM, he didn’t want to understand it and didn’t trust techies. So naturally he became head of the biggest technology company in Britain aided and abetted by Harold Wilson’s take-over policy. A philistine attitude to industry and an admiration for making money by financial shystering are still part of the UK psyche which explains why so many people are developing fintech.
I remember back in the day when I was a student (and Wenches was a place) that there were schemes to re-train science graduates as accountants and promised a tripling of the salaries. It was supposedly quite an easy conversion since we were “enumerate” which I think means that we knew the difference between “millions” and “billions”.
I never understood why technology had such a bad standing in a country with many of the best universities for technology.
“enumerate” – yup we were. Today we’re heading for “illiterate” judging by what the educational institutes and society in general are churning out..
How much of the British leadership thinking is coloured by the lingering spirit of Baron Weinstock? I understand he had limited time for technologists. And fintech is all the rage these days I understand.
That’s very true, AnotherDavid, and the PM is no doubt influenced to some extent by her banker husband.
All the politicians regard business as banking, which is really just moving other peoples money and taking a cut every time you do it.
Real business is making or doing something of value, alas they don’t understand the difference.
David
I thought the gas, electricity and water had already been flogged off to the French and Germans, migry, while the Chinese are building the new power stations. Maybe we could sell the road system and describe it as a massive vote of confidence in the future of the post-Brexit UK economy.
Sell the London tube, nice and iconic … sell the scruffy old buildings too, things like the Big Ben, Tower bridge, London Tower (loot an all) … then may be, just may be one year there will be a surplus … have a big party of it and then run for the hills, or in your case the boats.
Oh come on…it was very much said tongue in cheek…the simley was intentionally omitted. Members of my family are very unhappy that key infrastructure companies such as the utilities are allowed to be owned by foreign companies. Perhaps they didn’t work well while in public ownership, but in that case the people at the top should all have been sacked with no compensation…oh hold on the unions don’t like it when incompetent employees get sacked. Then again the top brass in the unions have their noses in the trough just like all the others. Geez this country is really in a mess.
If this continues then the next thing we know the government will be selling off gas, electricity and water utilities to foreign companies.
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