Japan’s SoftBank spends £24bn on UK chipmaker ARM

Inside nearly every smartphone, tablet, e-reader, and smartwatch are tiny microprocessors that tell the machine what to do.

ARM Holdings, which Japanese internet giant SoftBank, has agreed to buy for £24.3bn (€29bn), is the world’s biggest designer of these semiconductors.

Founded in 1990 in Cambridge, and today employing about 4,000 people, the company focuses on small, low-power devices, while industry leader Intel leads in desktop and laptop personal computers.