With SoftBank Group Corp.’s sale of Arm Ltd. to Nvidia Corp. in severe jeopardy, the company faces the prospect of losing a jackpot of roughly $74 billion (¥8.3 trillion). And its consolation prize is uncertain.
U.S. antitrust officials sued to block the takeover on Thursday, arguing it will stifle innovation in the chip industry. Nvidia has vowed to press ahead, but the transaction also faces reviews from U.K., European Union and Chinese regulators — as well as opposition from Arm’s own customers — and Wall Street analysts are all but calling the deal dead.
That leaves SoftBank in a quandary. Nvidia had agreed to buy the business for about $40 billion in September 2020, and a subsequent surge in the bidder’s stock price increased the potential payday by tens of billions of dollars. Other suitors are unlikely to match such an offer and might spark their own regulatory concerns.