The only downside to date is that all of the above potentially means nothing now. I say potentially because it looks likely that SoftBank, a Japanese telecommunications giant which admittedly very few of us in ARM had ever heard of before, will be our new masters (check the news). Not just shareholders, no. We're selling the whole company.
And for what? We've listened to the justifications put forth, and they did not inspire.
They said that we're getting great premiums on our stock units. That's great, I guess. Let's hope they have some other new incentive to give us after the buy out.
They said that we're going to need the investment. Why? ARM has market dominance that few companies will ever have. We have a licensing and royalty model that is bringing in tons of cash. We're hiring good people as fast as we can find them.
They said that the SoftBank's vision for the future aligns with ARM's. For many things this may be true.. but let's be honest here. A Japanese telecommunications giant with an interest in robotics and IoT probably does not care about lighting technology for video games as much. Or VR, or GPUs.. or Imaging. It may take 5 years, or 10 years, but eventually things are going to diverge, tough times will appear, promises aren't going to be remembered, and lots of loyal staff are going to be left out in the cold. They'll say it was sad, and unfortunate, and they tried, but you were, "Just not core to the business."
Perhaps I don't know all the details as I should, and perhaps there's more to this story. Perhaps. But it feels like a bad idea, and nothing any of us have heard from the CEO changes that opinion. It hasn't been sold well, and none of my colleagues want to be owned by a far away entity. We valued ARM's independence and liked working at the centre, and were proud to work for a British company. Now it feels as if we are doomed to be another appendage to an out of country corporation.
