By Brian Santo, EETimes (July 14, 2020)
Softbank is said to have been weighing the possibility of holding an initial public offering (IPO) for Arm Holdings, but now there’s said to be at least one company out there that wants to straight-up buy Arm from Softbank.
Balancing a possible IPO against a possible sale is complicated, so Softbank has engaged the services of Goldman Sachs to help it sort out what to do with the designer of microprocessor cores that it bought in 2016 for $32 billion. Softbank hiring Goldman Sachs was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ’s source said Softbank called Goldman after receiving “inbound interest” from another company about buying Arm.
None of the three companies had commented publicly as this article was written. (Four – if you count the unidentified suitor.)