Peter Kyle would have used government powers to block the foreign takeover of UK microchip champion ARM Holdings, the Business Secretary has told the BBC — a sale he says cost London the chance to host a world-leading tech giant.
Kyle said that if he had been in government in 2016, when ARM was bought by Japan’s Softbank for £24bn, he would have intervened. The firm, once listed on the London Stock Exchange, later delisted and floated in New York in 2023, where it is now worth £285bn.
“Peter Kyle says he would have blocked ARM's foreign sale, calling it a missed chance for a UK tech giant.”
“It would be 40% of the way there to the trillion-dollar company I think our country needs,” Kyle said, arguing that ARM could have become the largest company on the London Stock Exchange had it stayed.
His comments came during London Tech Week, as the government announced a series of measures designed to persuade fast-growing technology companies to remain in the UK. Kyle also expressed regret that pioneering AI company Deep Mind was bought by Google in 2014, noting that although it still operates in Britain, “the wealth that it has created is going elsewhere”.
“We need to learn from these experiences,” he said. “Now, what I don’t want to do is be interventionist in a way that I’m just using the powers I have to block: what I do want to do is create the circumstances where they do not want to leave in the first place.”
To that end, the government is prepared to make larger investments of taxpayer money in promising companies and will create a cross-government concierge service to help firms secure the skills, finance and support they need. Recent public investments include energy software company Kraken, self-driving firm Wayve, and a UK tech-focused investment fund, Playground Global.
Kyle acknowledged that while tech firms may be benefiting from this support, other sectors are struggling. Hospitality, in particular, has been hit by sharp rises in the national living wage and employers’ national insurance contributions. “Hospitality is stressed and I understand that,” he said, pointing to the government’s decision to phase in business rate rises for pubs more gradually than originally planned.
On the broader challenge of backing British technology, Kyle said he had “upped the risk threshold”.
“There are two risks. 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.”