Much has been said, rightly in my view, about the loss to the UK’s hopes of developing a vibrant technology sector from the £24 billion takeover of Arm Holdings by Japan’s SoftBank and other raids on British high-tech businesses.
The just-completed cash purchase of Arm, though, creates a hole in UK investors’ portfolios, too, an opportunity to take advantage of just such fast-growing and innovative businesses. SoftBank was prepared to pay 57 times’ historic earnings for Arm, an offer irresistible to City institutions. Most such takeovers come from the United States, where the sort of earnings multiples techie firms can command on Nasdaq and elsewhere are far in excess of what the City is prepared to value such businesses at. This mismatch makes UK companies