ARM Faces a Boardroom Revolt as It Seeks to Remove the CEO of Its Chinese Joint Venture
ARM, the British silicon ship designer backed by SoftBank, is currently embroiled in a nail-biting boardroom conflict, equipped with an equally appropriate dramatic flareup.
To wit, ARM issued a statement on Wednesday, disclosing that the board of its Chinese joint venture – ARM China – has approved the removal of the incumbent chairman and CEO, Allen Wu. Bear in mind that the British chip designer was purchased by the Japanese behemoth, SoftBank, in 2016 for £24.3 billion. ARM currently holds a 49 percent stake in its Chinese JV, with a consortium of investors led by the Chinese equity fund, Hopu Investment, retaining the residual 51 percent stake.
However, just hours after the initial statement by ARM, its Chinese JV issued a contradictory statement on Weibo, reiterating that Allen Wu "continues to serve as its CEO" and that ARM China was operating as usual.
See also: SoftBank's Arm Says China CEO Fired for Major Irregularities
"Following a whistleblower complaint and several other current and former employee complaints, an investigation was undertaken by Arm Limited," the company said in its latest statement, jointly issued with shareholder Hopu Investment. "Evidence received from multiple sources found serious irregularities, including failing to disclose conflicts of interest and violations of the employee handbook." Wu didn't respond to emails and a message sent via his LinkedIn profile seeking comment.
SoftBank's China Chip Venture Rejects Accusations Against CEO
Also at EE Times and TechNode.
Related Stories
Nvidia is reportedly in 'advanced talks' to buy ARM for more than $32 billion
SoftBank has been rumored to be exploring a sale of ARM — the British chip designer that powers nearly every major mobile processor from companies like Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, and Huawei — and now, it might have found a buyer. Nvidia is reportedly in "advanced talks" to buy ARM in a deal worth over $32 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Nvidia is said to be the only company that's involved in concrete discussions with SoftBank for the purchase at this time, and a deal could arrive "in the next few weeks," although nothing is finalized yet. If the deal does go through, it would be one of the largest deals ever in the computer chip business and would likely draw intense regulatory scrutiny.
Previously:
(2020-07-12) Apple Has Built its Own Mac Graphics Processors
(2020-07-11) Nvidia's Market Cap Rises Above Intel's
(2020-06-11) ARM Faces a Boardroom Revolt as it Seeks to Remove the CEO of Its Chinese Joint Venture
(2019-10-29) Fed Up Of Playing Whac-A-Mole With Network Of Softbank-Owned Patent Holders, Intel Goes To Court
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @10:23PM (4 children)
All ARM has is IP.
And you go into JV with a Chinese outfit?!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Thursday June 11 2020, @10:38PM (3 children)
They'll either lose control of it, or they'll do what the CCP tells them.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday June 11 2020, @11:42PM (2 children)
That's because those are the terms of trade in China. It's the way things have been for at least 30 years and no-one is surprised by it, because the Chinese didn't lie to anyone who wanted access to the Chinese labour force, or the Chinese market.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @12:22AM
The West is waking up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Parliamentary_Alliance_on_China [wikipedia.org]
Some people said it should have been after Tiananmen, in the 90s, others after noticing the 49-51 rule was staying for ever, others after the massive sales of business to China companies... but better late than never. Now we will see if the politicians can rein the business men ("laissez faire" must mean something like "ass rape by cactus" in Chinese), or their blind greed will be fatal for the West.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday June 12 2020, @01:44AM
It's the way things have been for at least 30 years...
48 years. How many are surprised it lasted this long? But the game's still running, make sure you have an agile portfolio
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snotnose on Thursday June 11 2020, @11:24PM (8 children)
20 years ago it was Intel and AMD (x86), vs ARM, SH-4, and MIPS. I actually worked at the silicon level on all 3 of the latter (ported Linux to SH-4, tried to make a MIPS platform Microsoft happy (they had a set of tests a CPU had to pass, as a consultant I got hired to make it pass. I failed, the MIPS memory architecture was incompatible with what the Microsoft tests required and I jumped ship before anything got resolved).
3-4 years later was porting cellphone games to the BREW platform (still a consultant). Took a game to Qualcomm for verification, ran into my boss when I was working for Globalstar 10 years earlier, he said "I want you, interview", I did, next thing I knew I was in the guts of the ARM.
Footnote: if memory serves, MIPS reserved 25% of it's addressing for I/O. Microsoft wanted memory access to more than 75% of address space. The Microsoft guy I dealt with was really smart, but this project was minor to him and he flat out didn't care. I don't remember how many times I pointed him the the MIPS docs, his attitude was "don't care, no exceptions".
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @11:44PM (7 children)
You worked for qualcom, right.
I despise qualcom, but at least they not as dumb as ARM.
Pathetic limeys.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Friday June 12 2020, @12:42AM (6 children)
You might actually have a point. When I worked for Qualcomm it was a great company. Hell, they even had a nurse's station I could get a flu shot from, and a library I could request books from.
I left in '08, about the time Paul took over.
Over the next couple years I ran into people who still worked there and said it sucked. The Christmas parties (used to be majestic) were history. The Summer picnics (used to be historic) were gone. The expected hours went up while the rewards for those hours went down.
They did a huge layoff some, what, 8-10 years ago? Lost half my contacts (read: references) then. About 2 years later I was tired of being retired, needed references, nobody I knew was still there.
I've been retired due to QC stock options since '08, would like to work again, but, well, it's been 12 years and I have no reference and,, well, while I learned Java on my own, I haven't worked for 12 years now.
Try to explain a 12 year gap in your resume and see how far you get.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @02:16AM
wtf, you are not criminal...
you did not work cuz u did other things.
with your knowledge, you could spend 6 months to catch up, do some project, and just take the pain of interview...
-zug
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @09:14AM
Just say you had to take care of a member of your family. Almost no one will dare to ask follow ups. If they do, you can just say something vague like, "the situation came (is coming) to its natural conclusion." And after you drop that bomb on them, just pivot by describing how you kept your skills sharp or other thing that are germane to the job. Instead of a chronological resume, you can use an alternate form. Such as one that highlights your skills or projects or whatever you find on the web. Many people we see here are changing to that form even without an employment gap.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday June 12 2020, @03:35PM
They did another one three years ago when they lost the lawsuit against Apple and had to raise a billion in cash quickly to pay. There was a big Qualcomm contingent at the LLVM DevMeeting at the time - about half of them had jobs at the end. They killed off their ARM server processor effort then, along with a bunch of other related bits. It probably set ARM back several years in the server space - no one else had competitive cores for that market segment on anywhere near the same timelines.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 12 2020, @06:07PM (2 children)
You were working on a sooper sekrit project. You could tell them, but then you'd have to kill them.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday June 12 2020, @10:31PM (1 child)
I haven't worked in 12 years and have no references (no tech references, I have several non-tech friends who will swear to what a great guy I am).
I kinda learned Java, did some stuff on my own. I can give you code where in the early comments say "My 2nd Java program, if I had to do it again this huge pseudo-C struct would be a real object". I actually javadoc'd the program several years ago thinking that some job would want a programming sample. That same program, years later, also uses Java Streams. I use this program every 2 weeks (it's an email game). Consider that itch scratched.
I have a pi media server.
I still feel strong in hardware (as in, give me a chip and I'll write a device driver)
I'm really good at C, good enough at C++, and curious about my Java
I run Linux, and can admin a Linux network.
I'm bored (yea, about that) and could use the money (oops, might have "retired" too early), and wouldn't mind working again. I don't really want a high stress job, but "here is what we need, code it" would be good. Except I'm good enough to say "you screwed up here, want me to work on a fix or keep my head down and code away"
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 15 2020, @03:49PM
With those skills, I truly hope you can find something you like. Java has been the number 1 or 2 language for 15 years. Recently dropped to number 3, edged out by Python. C and C++ are also not very far down the top languages lists.
Strong hardware and device driver seems to me to be much more obscure, but highly useful. In other words, we need device drivers, and kernels, etc, but there aren't that many software projects which do that actual work. Thus the obscurity. Yet the extreme usefulness.
If you learn Java or C#, then one thing you can get into is vertical market business software. Boring business software. It is the stuff that makes the world go around. Like the water, sewer, gas and electrical service to your house, which you give little thought to -- boring business software is everywhere make makes everything work. Much of it is custom written. In house. Some of it is SaaS. No no matter what you may think about it being a bad idea to use SaaS, the simple fact is that SaaS makes actual money. Real actual customers apparently like it very much.
When you go to your doctor's office, or public library, or to get your car's oil changed, or restaurant, etc, you'll notice they all use computers. These computers all run custom written, or vertical market software.
By vertical market, consider horizontal market. Widely useful things everyone uses -- horizontally -- like spareadsheets, word processors, etc. Vertical market software has a small market niche at a much higher price. The software that manages a restaurant, tables, assigns seating, orders, etc. There is a limited market for that software package. You're not going to find it on sale at Microcenter. Software for a lawyer's office which manages documents, and can construct a contract from many different standard legal paragraphs drawn from a library, etc. Cities don't write their own software to bill you for water -- they buy an off the shelf commercial package which does that, including the utility billing, and payment processing. How many water meters do we have in inventory? Where is a water meter with this specific serial number? Etc.
People like to complain about Java. But it must be doing something right. So successful it was that Microsoft copied it as C# after being unable to "Extend" it and being sued by Sun Microsystems.
Just sayin'
Best of luck!
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by petecox on Friday June 12 2020, @01:48AM
When you piss off one of your biggest customers; Huawei...
(Score: 1) by crunchy_one on Friday June 12 2020, @01:59AM
Thankfully it's about ARM the maritime concern. Carry On.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @10:06AM
This has been a public service announcement from GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA).
And now we return to our usual broadcast...
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.
Are you GAY [klerck.org]?
Are you a NIGGER [mugshots.org]?
Are you a GAY NIGGER [gay-sex-access.com]?
If you answered "Yes" to any of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!
Join GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time GNAA member.
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the fastest-growing GAY NIGGER community with THOUSANDS of members all over United States of America. You, too, can be a part of GNAA if you join today!
Why not? It's quick and easy - only 3 simple steps!
First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE [imdb.com] and watch it.
Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on SoylentNews [soylentnews.org], a popular "news for trolls" website
Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on EFNet, and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!
If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is EFNet, and you can connect to irc.prison.net or irc.colosolutions.net as one of the EFNet servers.
If you do not have an IRC client handy, you are free to use the GNAA Java IRC client by clicking here [nero-online.org].
If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up.
This post proudly brought to you by the GNAA president
________________________________________________
| ______________________________________._a,____ |
| _______a_._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ |
| __ad#7!!*P____a.d#0a____#!-_#0i___.#!__W#0#___ |
| _j#'_.00#,___4#dP_"#,__j#,__0#Wi___*00P!_"#L,_ |
| _"#ga#9!01___"#01__40,_"4Lj#!_4#g_________"01_ |
| ________"#,___*@`__-N#____`___-!^_____________ |
| _________#1__________?________________________ |
| _________j1___________________________________ |
| ____a,___jk_GAY_NIGGER_ASSOCIATION_OF_AMERICA_ |
| ____!4yaa#l___________________________________ |
| ______-"!^____________________________________ |
` _______________________________________________'