UK govt urged to bolt tough legal protections onto Arm and protect jobs – or simply veto Nvidia's £31bn acquisition
- Reference: 1600756152
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/09/22/uk_government_arm_nvidia_unite/
- Source link:
Speaking in Parliament [2]last midnight , Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner noted that last time Arm was [3]sold , in 2016 to Japanese conglomerate Softbank, the sale of one of the UK’s few remaining tech giants was of such importance that the Treasury Secretary took charge of it and ensured legal protections over the sale. He asked today's government to do the same.
“The silence by the government has been ominous,” warned Zeichner. “We have received very little in the way of a substantive response [to MPs’ questions].” He added that it “would be astonishing if it was prepared to throw away British influence” by not adding legal protections to “promises” made by Nvidia.
Nvidia says regulators will be 'very supportive' of $40bn Arm buy despite concerns about chip designer's independence [4]READ MORE
“They have made promises, but without legal guarantees, they are just promises,” he noted.
The UK’s second largest labor union, Unite, has warned that the sale could result in the loss of up to 1,100 jobs. Some of its members met Zeichner on Monday and told him they were worried that “Arm’s management are trying to bypass staff consultation and secure a sale that would be damaging to the business and its workforce.”
Unite noted that while Nvidia promises to retain jobs, that promise does not extend to ancillary roles – roughly 600 people – or Arm’s graphics processor division, which employs 500 people and overlaps with Nvidia's core strength: designing GPUs. The union warned that if Nvidia merges Arm operations while retaining Arm's brand and model, it could still result in the loss of those jobs.
Fobbed off
According to Arm staff, the first they heard about the proposed sale was through the press – something that is not unusual with public companies – and raised concerns within hours at an internal meeting, but were “fobbed off” with claims that nothing will happen for 18 months as the deal seeks regulatory approval.
Arm employs 3,000 people although only a small number are members of a union, and Zeichner told Parliament that without legal protections, those workers would be at risk.
Zeichner, Unite, and a number of other politicians also worried that the takeover by an American goliath could result in Arm being pulled into President Trump's trade war with China, with a resulting loss of Arm’s neutrality and its Chinese customers.
In response, the minister for digital and culture Caroline Dinenage MP said nothing about the proposed Arm deal itself but spoke in generalities about how the government monitors all such deals “very closely and will take the appropriate action.”
She outlined the process the government will follow: it will first need to determine whether there is a public interest aspect to the sale and if so, issue an intervention after which the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will review the deal and send its findings to the Secretary of State of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Oliver Downden MP.
At that point, she said, Downden will decide whether the UK government should intervene or not.
Spiky
While the government minister was soporific in her responses, Unite was significantly spikier, demanding the acquisition be shot down.
“The concerns of Arm’s employees, along with the alarms bells being sounded from politicians and industry, should be reason enough for the government to strike this deal down in the national interest,” said the union’s national officer for information technology Louisa Bull.
“Ambitions to see the rise of a UK equivalent to Apple are all well and good," she added, referring to Dominic Cummings' [5]dream of fostering trillion-dollar British tech giants post-Brexit.
"The fact is that without a cohesive industrial strategy from the government ... we will be overtaken by other nations.
"Such an industrial strategy must include safeguarding Arm, which is the UK tech sector’s crown jewel, and ensuring that the UK’s annual £292 billion public procurement budget is geared towards supporting UK manufacturing and the jobs that come with it." ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/14/nvida_arm_acquisition/
[2] https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/dd545405-2947-49ba-ab18-f9cbe718a153?in=23:48:55
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/18/softbank_to_buy_arm_holdings_say_reports/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/14/arm_nvidia_deal_details/
[5] https://twitter.com/i/events/1304009037583912963
[6] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Do nothing until there is no other choice
seems to be the mantra of the Civil (sic) Service and therefore Government these days.
It would be nice to have a plan for say 'getting rid of Diesel trains on our railways' (or any one of 100+ other things) but no. The do the minimum just so that ministers (of any party) can say 'we are doing something' to MP's and the Media.
Where are the 'Shovel Ready Projects' ?
Where is the 'Oven ready deal' ?
Answers on a pinhead please and send them to Downing St (for all the good it will do)
Re: Do nothing until there is no other choice
Answers on a pinhead please and send them to Downing St (for all the good it will do)
Sorry, but the print will be too small for Dominic Cummings to read and we don't want him to do a day trip up to Barnard Castle to check his eyesight again with an imminent Covid-19 second wave due
One Word.
Cadbury.
Re: One Word.
@IGotOut
I can not upvote you enough.
Cheers… Ishy
Re: One Word.-- much more than ONE word
Arriva (Deutsche Bahn) , Northumbria Water ( Cheung Kong Holdings) , Southern Water (J.P. Morgan + Hermes Infrastructure - biggest shareholders, USA) , EDF, E-On ..Rover Group, MG Rover Group,
Rolls-Royce Motors, Bentley Motorsetc etc etc
Sit!
"The UK government has been urged to add legal protections to the proposed £31bn sale of Brit chip designer Arm to Nvidia"
.
The same legal protection Assange is enjoying in Belmarsh?
*lol* Sit! And don't poop on the carpet...
Of course the UK gov won't be interested in intervening as much now Arm is being bought by an American company, because of our 'special relationship' with the US and we are looking to get a post Brexit trade deal with them, they don't want to start rocking the boat.
This is the same reason the UK haven't kicked up too much fuss over the killing of British teenager Harry Dunn by an American Anne Sacoolas and the US refusing to extradite her. Yet imagine how much fuss the US would kick up if were a reversed situation, they would be threatening to boycott UK made products and services until something was done.
Why sell Arm anyway ?
It's doing good, isn't it ? What's the point in selling it ? Who benefits from this ?
Arm won't. Being folded into Nvidia will obviously get those in Arm's graphic section shed when their specific knowledge has been "transferred". For Nvidia, well it already has chip designers that do a fine job, it doesn't really need more of them. This must simply be to gain control of Arm's IP and patents, in order to control that down the line.
If that is true, then it is all of Arm's employees that are at risk.
Re: Why sell Arm anyway ?
"Who benefits from this ?"
The government won't do anything on this sale as they have the post-Brexit US trade deal to consider and some of them will probably be shareholders.
Re: Why sell Arm anyway ?
It's not only needing a US trade deal which will have our government not do anything but the entire Brexit thing.
Those "not stupid" who voted for it, who pretend they studied the issue in depth, weighed up the pros and cons, refuse to understand Brexit was a globalist's wet dream, and intended as such, where "we are open for business" means everything is for sale and ready for exploiting. May was applauding the sale of ARM as the shining example of that.
We all need to be lubing ourselves up and getting ready for the Great Brexit Shafting. We're America's bitch now.
Re: Why sell Arm anyway ?
"What's the point in selling it ? Who benefits from this ?"
Softbank need the money.
Re: Why sell Arm anyway ?
SoftBank made some disastrous investments (E.g. Uber and WeWork) and their major shareholder has pulled out, so they need some liquidity, so they are selling off ARM to help out.
Poor move to my mind, it is one of the investments that will bring long term rewards... But the investment "industry" is only interested in the next 3 months and anything long term is not sexy, if it doesn't bolster their immediate earnings.
Re: Why sell Arm anyway ?
"Poor move to my mind, it is one of the investments that will bring long term rewards"
It's a short-term gain for long-term pain, yes, but if you are in a short-term hole, you can only sell assets somebody wants.
Re: Why sell Arm anyway ?
It's called "capitalism" and has nothing to do with common sense, workers or public anything and everything to do with someone's perception of cash value ... Sell it and make loads of money today on one side, keep it and make smaller amounts of money for much longer but with more risk tomorrow on the other - where's the pendulum of cash likely to swing?
The issue was that it was sold to foreign investors in the first place but, for whatever reason, that's the way the UK Government apparently like things to be.
Re: Why sell Arm anyway ?
"Who benefits from this ?"
Softbank who need some readies after so many of their investments didn't we work out terribly well for them.
They don't care about British industry
Unless it is lining their pockets they don't care.
Poor Europe
Afterwards we whine because Europe has no tech industry and is reduced to an amusement park for rich Asian entrepeneurs.
We sell the future high tech jobs of our children for a buck and a half because our governments are slaves of Wall street barons.
No way to stop it
After the Cadbury debacle it is obvious that our Governments (left or right) have no power to stop wealthy foreign companies doing exactly what they want. Our railways, airports, airlines, utilities and car companies, to name a few, are all owned by foreign companies so ARM is not a special case, more another example of why the UK is no longer a great nation.
Over the centuries we have invented many great things but we have seldom capitalised on them. In WWII the Germans shot at our planes with a plane (ME262) powered by a jet engine which our military rejected as it "didn't have a propeller".
how to harm a caause
The most perfidious way of harming a cause is to deliberately defend it with faulty arguments.
This quote is more than a century old, but it is truer than ever, nowadays you can see the same trick applied over and over again on mainstream, non mainstream media and politics.
The argument of job protection can be questioned because Softbank is in troubled waters and can't give more guarantees than NVidia. The argument of the local technology going into foreign hands has also been ignored countless of times, moreover both of them have a thin legal base.
The argument about NVidia acquiring a dominant position in the smartphones, tablet, IOT/embedded market instead has a strong legal base. How can you allow a single player get control over the patents and the technologies used by all the competitors?
UK govt to nVidia: you need to sign this legally binding undertaking regarding ARM.
nVidia to govt: So, like the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement...?
Duh!!
“... first need to determine whether there is a public interest aspect to the sale...”
Oooo - let me think? FFS.
Perhaps rather than pursuing the time honoured art of doing nothing and uttering stock phrases that don't even qualify as excuses, the UK government could consider looking for a partner to go in with them as partners in a purchase of Arm.
They have partnered with Bharti on the One Web Deal, something similar to secure Arm now would be useful and then look at gradually reducing the government share over time.