Confirmed last Monday (18 July 2016): 100%-thinkware-firm-and-brilliant-bunch-of-Cambridge-mathematicians/computer-scientists, ARM, is to be bought by Japan's Softbank for £24 bn ($32 bn). In official words: the board of ARM is expected to recommend shareholders to accept the offer — which is around 43% up on its closing market value of £16bn8 last Friday. Softbank is said to pay in cash also “using” a long term loan from Japan's Mizuho Bank.

As all readers of Elektor magazine and Elektor e-zine know, Acorn RISC Machines is a fab but fabless enterprise, designing microchips for use in all sorts of applications like smartphones and a good many Elektor projects. In fact back in the year 2005 (7D5hex) , Elektor’s LPC210x ‘ARMee’ development board pioneered the use of an ARM chip by home programmers, in the face of our competitors seemingly stuck in PICs and AVRs. And another well-kept secret: RISC stands for Reduced Instruction Set Controller.
Returning to 2016, ARM currently employs more than 3 Kpeople. The Holding said ARM would keep its headquarters in Cambridge and that it would at least double the number of its staff over the next 22 + 1 years.

The sale no doubt was boosted by the fall in the value of the pound since Brexit — making UK targets cheaper. Consequently,  many industry watchers (London based or not) are predicting a new wave of foreign takeovers so the Acme Corporation my fellow news Editor Clemens Valens reported on a month ago in a splendid news item is getting closer to reality even without the help of little RoadRunner. The story then was about Farnell (element14 / Newark) being gobbled up by a Swiss investor I am honest to admit I never heard of. Clemens’ news item drew a moderate number of well-argued Comments from you. The takeover of ARM for a gargantuan sum I expect to have even more impact. Two facts, like: (1) you reading this news item through an ARM chip in your smartphone, and (2) ARM getting extensive coverage in our publications since 2005, should solicit some more response. What do you think? Will you be reading an Acme publication soon? On a Japanese phone only? Will prices of ARM-inspired chip finally rise above $0.99 max? Press Add a comment, below.