Arm Ltd is planning to transfer shares in Arm China (安谋科技) to a SoftBank Group special purpose vehicle to speed up its initial public offering plans, said Reuters quoting a Financial Times report on March 30.
The share transfer, if successful, will leave the China unit tied to Arm headquarters through a licensing agreement, instead of the 47.3% equity stake Arm holds today, according to Financial Times.
The chip designing company will continue to get licensing revenues from Arm China but will not need to audit the unit's financials, the report also said.
Last week, Reuters had reported SoftBank was planning to pick Goldman Sachs Group as the lead underwriter on Arm's IPO which could value the company at as much as $60 billion. SoftBank has said that it is likely to list Arm on Nasdaq by March 2023.
According to news from Reuters, the Japanese conglomerate announced a deal to sell Arm to Nvidia in 2020, but the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued to block it late last year, arguing that it would be detrimental to competition in nascent markets for chips in self-driving cars and a new category of networking chips.
