Arm fires starting gun on US IPO after snubbing London

The Cambridge-based chipmaker rebuffed advances from Rishi Sunak to float in London

British chip designer Arm has officially filed to go public in New York in what is expected to be the largest listing of the year.

The Softbank-backed company is set to begin investor roadshows in the first week of September, with the Cambridge-based chipmaker planning to price the initial public offering (IPO) the following week, Bloomberg reported.

The highly anticipated IPO in the US comes after Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, failed to convince Arm to float in London or pursue a dual UK-US listing.

Arm’s decision to list in New York rather than London has fuelled fears that the City is losing its competitiveness to Wall Street, where valuations are typically higher.

The listing marks Arm’s return to the public stock markets, having previously been a member of the FTSE 100 until its takeover by Softbank’s Vision Fund, the investment arm of the Japanese conglomerate, for £24bn in 2016.

The tech giant, whose products feature in about 90pc of the world’s smartphones, said it expects to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “ARM”, according to paperwork filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

The filing said: “As the world moves increasingly towards artificial intelligence and machine learning-enabled computing, Arm will be central to this transition.”

The filing does not reveal Arm’s planned offering price nor how many shares it plans to issue, however the firm is reportedly seeking a record valuation of $70bn (£55bn).

SoftBank is also seeking to raise between $8bn and $10bn from the listing, which would also be a record for a floatation of a UK company.

Softbank will remain the controlling shareholder of Arm once the chipmaker begins trading. It bought back almost all of Vision Fund’s 25pc stake in Arm for $16.1bn, according to the filing.

The documents also revealed that Arm’s financial performance was hit by a global slowdown in smartphone shipments last year.

Arm’s total sales declined 1pc to $2.68bn during the year ending March 31. The group’s sales have since dropped by 2.5pc to $675m during the quarter ending June 30, compared with the same period last year.

Wall Street investment banks Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, plus Japanese mega-bank Mizuho have been appointed to oversee the IPO.

Arm chief executive Rene Haas is set to receive cash and shares worth $40m from the listing, The Times reported.