Business Secretary Peter Kyle said Wednesday he would have intervened to block the foreign sale of Arm Holdings, the UK microchip designer once considered the crown jewel of British technology, had he held office at the time of its 2016 acquisition by Japan’s SoftBank.
Speaking during London Tech Week, Kyle told the BBC that Arm could have been the biggest company on the London Stock Exchange if it had remained in British hands, estimating it would be “40% of the way there to the trillion-dollar company I think our country needs.” The Cambridge-based firm had been listed on the London Stock Exchange until SoftBank bought it for £24 billion ($32 billion) a decade ago. It was delisted from London, relisted in New York in 2023, and now has a market value of £285 billion ($380 billion).
“We need to learn from these experiences,” Kyle said.
Kyle emphasized he does not want to be “interventionist in a way that I’m just using the powers I have to block” foreign acquisitions. “What I do want to do is create the circumstances where they do not want to leave in the first place,” he added.
The government outlined a series of measures to attract and keep fast-growing technology companies in the UK. Kyle said the government was prepared to make bigger investments of taxpayer money in promising companies and would create a cross-government concierge service to help firms access skills, finance and support.
“There are two risks,” Kyle said. “The first is that we get so slowed down by caution and anxiety about AI that we don’t embrace and shape it. The other risk is that we embrace and shape it and get some things wrong – I choose to take the latter.”
Recent government investments include public stakes in energy software company Kraken, self-driving firm Wayve and a UK technology-focused investment fund called Playground Global.
The comments come as US tech giants SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI prepare for blockbuster share sales in New York, underscoring the competitive landscape for technology listings that the UK government is trying to navigate.
Kyle acknowledged that other sectors, particularly hospitality, are struggling under sharp rises in the national living wage and employers’ national insurance contributions. He said the government’s recent announcement phasing in business rate increases for pubs more gradually was intended to address that stress.
Asked about recent warnings from former Health Secretary Alan Milburn of “a lost generation” of young workers — with the number of people not in employment, education or training (NEETs) topping one million for the first time since the aftermath of the financial crisis — Kyle said he accepted the structural challenges.
“I accept there are structural challenges to the way young people enter the workforce. I accept that. Alan Milburn has done his analysis of the problem. We are working closely with Alan to see what actions we can take to tackle this,” Kyle said.