FirstFT: Arm valued at $52bn ahead of public listing

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Shares in UK chip designer Arm have been priced at $51 apiece before trading begins today, giving the company a market valuation of $52.3bn.

The price is at the top end of a range of $47-$51 a share due to high demand that resulted in its stock being more than five times oversubscribed.

The listing has been closely watched as a barometer for tech initial public offerings. It is the largest listing in two years since electric-truck maker Rivian debuted in 2021, raising about $12bn. Tech valuations have fallen from their coronavirus pandemic-era highs in the past 18 months amid economic uncertainty and rising interest rates.

The IPO will raise about $4.9bn for SoftBank, which has offered 9.4 per cent of the company’s stock. After the IPO, the Japanese group will still control roughly 90 per cent of the company’s shares. Read the full story.

Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:

• ECB interest rates: European Central Bank governors are split over whether to raise or hold rates today, with potential pitfalls in either direction.

• UK-China: The British government is expected to formally respond to a damning report from parliament that found the UK’s approach to China’s “increasingly sophisticated” espionage was “completely inadequate”.

• Results: Adobe, UK retailer John Lewis and advertising group M&C Saatchi report.

Five more top stories

1. Goldman Sachs has fired several employees over “serious violations” of its communications policies in the latest clampdown on Wall Street over record-keeping practices. The employees include partner and global head of transaction banking Hari Moorthy, according to a person familiar with the matter. Read the full story.

2. The EU has announced an anti-subsidy investigation into China’s electric car industry in an attempt to shield European manufacturers before they are priced out by Chinese rivals. While electric vehicle imports from China represent only a small share of the bloc’s market, they are growing fast and could hit 15 per cent within two years.

• More EVs: More than half the electric vehicles sold by Vietnam’s VinFast this year have been to a related party, underscoring limited demand at the start-up whose valuation briefly eclipsed that of Ford and General Motors.

3. Private funds are set to spend billions of dollars to comply with US disclosure rules imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission last month. Hedge fund, venture capital and private equity groups are looking to recruit more staff and hire different kinds of lawyers. Here’s how else the industry is coping with the biggest regulatory changes since 2008.

4. The allegations that prompted Bernard Looney to resign from BP were made as recently as last week. The board responded by opening a second probe in 18 months into Looney’s past personal relationships with colleagues before the chief executive quit on Tuesday. Here are more details on the allegations and the board’s investigation.

5. Falling house sales and prices have left British estate agents at their gloomiest in 14 years, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ monthly survey. New buyer inquiries, a measure of housing demand, and new sale instructions declined, while house price balance, which measures the difference between the percentage of surveyors seeing rises and falls in home prices, came in below economists’ expectations. Here’s more from the report published today.

News in-depth

Gloom is spreading through Germany’s manufacturing sector. German industry has gone from being the powerhouse of Europe’s economy to one of the region’s worst performers after a series of shocks, including the pandemic’s disruption of global supply chains and the power crisis unleashed by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

We’re also reading and watching . . . 

Chart of the day

Driven by a post-pandemic rebound, economic uncertainty and the cost of living crisis, the volume of cash payments rose in the UK by 7 per cent last year to 6.4bn — the first increase in a decade.

Take a break from the news

Why do we collect clothes? Mark C O’Flaherty’s new book, Narrative Thread, presents an intimate portrait of the many reasons we hold on to certain items of clothing. “Where families and lovers are involved, some items were incredibly emotional,” O’Flaherty told the Financial Times.

Additional contributions from Benjamin Wilhelm and Miles Ellingham