No meeting with Arm executives: Lee Jae-yong

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong speaks with reporters at Gimpo International Airport on Wednesday. [KO SUK-HYUN]

 
Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong expressed his expectation for discussion to acquire a stake of Arm when SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son visits Seoul next month.  
 
To a question whether he met with executives of Arm during his visit to U.K., Lee said that the meeting didn’t take place, but Son may “make the suggestion” about the deal.  
 
The vice chairman told the reporters on his way out of the Gimpo International Airport on Wednesday, following a two-week-long trip to Mexico, Panama and U.K.  
 
Son made it official that he intends to take Arm public, but the listing process has been far from easy. The investor remains unclear about where to list the British chip designer – either in New York or London or dual listing.  
 
With the listing procedure underway, industry insiders predict that Samsung Electronics and other chipmakers opt to hold a portion of stake after its listing instead of acquiring the company as a whole.  
 
Market analysts have said that acquiring Arm would be extremely difficult for any single company to pass the antitrust regulatory hurdles due to the outsized influence of Arm.
 
Apparently aware of the concern, chipmakers like Intel, SK hynix and Qualcomm have said that they could form or join a consortium to acquire Arm. Samsung Electronics has not yet made such a statement.
 
SoftBank’s attempt to sell Arm to Nividia for $40 billion fell through due to antitrust concerns.