UK’s chip designing company Arm Ltd is planning to transfer shares in its Chinese joint venture to a SoftBank Group special purpose vehicle.
A Reuters report that cited an earlier Financial Times’ report has it that Arm is transferring the shares to speed up its initial public offering (IPO) plans.
The share transfer, if successful, will leave the joint venture tied to Arm headquarters through a licensing agreement, instead of the 47.3% equity stake it holds today.
The chip designing company will continue to get licensing revenues from Arm China but will not need to audit the unit’s financials.
Last week, Reuters reported SoftBank was planning to pick Goldman Sachs Group ( as the lead underwriter on Arm’s IPO that could value the company at as much as $60 billion.
Arm is aiming a Nasdaq listing by March 2023.
SoftBank had announced a deal to sell Arm to Nvidia in 2020, but the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued to block it late last year.
The deal was blocked on grounds that it would be detrimental to competition in nascent markets for chips in self-driving cars and a new category of networking chips.
