A heap of hope is riding on the forthcoming stock market relisting of the British chip designer Arm in New York in what may be a defining deal of the decade. The company’s owner SoftBank, the Japanese investment firm run by the mercurial Masayoshi Son, is hoping to recoup part of the £24bn it paid for Arm in 2016 and validate its investment portfolio that has been shredded by the global tech market downturn.
A long line of private tech start-ups, living off financial vapours, is also hoping that a successful flotation will revive the moribund market for initial public offerings. Venture capital investors, starved of fresh funding in recent months, are hoping that a hot-again IPO market will enable them to cash out existing investments and recycle funds into new start-ups. Then, the industry’s lucrative financial merry-go-round can start spinning again.
But it may well be that second stock market flotations, like second marriages, represent a triumph of hope over experience. SoftBank’s troubles extend way beyond whether it can extract market value from Arm. Start-ups would be rash to count on a swift return to the go-go market conditions — and valuations — of 2021 (unless they slap generative artificial intelligence all over their pitch decks). And VC investors are facing the fact that the financial dynamics of their industry have radically changed in a higher interest rate world.