UK sold off US$42b of semicon firms before review

LONDON: The U.K. was once the leading semiconductor innovator in Europe, producing the likes of Arm Ltd., whose technology is found in 90% of all mobile devices, and Imagination Technologies Group Ltd., which supplies chip designs used by Apple Inc.

But that was before they were sold off to foreign buyers. Arm was acquired by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. with the government’s approval before being handed off to Nvidia Corp. Imagination was sold to a Chinese buyout fund, signed off by then-Prime Minister Theresa May, even as one of the funds’ founders was under investigation by the FBI for insider trading.