In 2016, when SoftBank, a Japanese corporation, purchased the assets of the British processor architect Arm, local authorities imposed a condition on it to double the number of British personnel in the next five years, and Japanese owners were able to meet this requirement, but since September last year up to 40% of the employees who had joined Arm since 2016 left the company.
In 2016, the British state of Arm had 1,770 staff members, by September of last year it had grown to more than 3,500, and worldwide, the company had a total of 6,950 employees. Since then, the global workforce has declined by 18%, and the loss of British staff has been even more pronounced, and 550 Arm professionals have been reduced worldwide, and the British office has lost 700 people at once.
According to the Financial Times, there are several factors that account for the output of the specialists: first, following the two-year pandemic of the information technology expansion race, many companies in the industry are experiencing a loss of staff, and Arm claims that it is not particularly prominent in this context; secondly, the optimization of the Arm organizational structure may have been associated with the forthcoming public placement of shares, the future of which is under great question in the current difficult macroeconomic environment; thirdly, Arm's own employees are wary of the uncertainty of the future company; in turn, it is uneasy for potential investors, because if Arm is preparing to put his assets on the stock market, the stability of the workforce for potential equity buyers plays an important role.
Arm insists that he continues to hire 525 vacancies worldwide, of which 373 are in the UK, while only 166 loose positions in the British Arm Unit are openly mentioned on the company's website. The negative state dynamics could also be affected by structural changes, as a significant number of Arm's employees moved from autumn to spring to SoftBank to focus on developments related to the Internet segment of things.
We note that the earlier meeting of the head of SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, with potential South Korean investors, did indeed take place on 1 October. During a visit to South Korea, SoftBank's CEO was expected to meet with Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, as both companies are interested in investing in Arm capital. There is no record of the official outcome of the meeting.