Monday, May 2nd 2022
Arm Retakes Control of Chinese Branch Office, New CEOs Appointed
According to the report from Reuters, SoftBank has managed to regain control of the Arm China branch office that went rogue under the chairman and CEO Allen Wu's leadership. Arm China is SoftBank's venture to operate Arm Ltd. business in the Chinese region. That means that Arm can use all the licensing and development done on the mainland with SoftBank's supervision and conduct business. However, that idea was tough to pull off when now ex-chairman/CEO Allen Wu decided not to give up his leadership role for almost two years, despite being fired in 2020.
Not everything is terrible, as the SoftBank operation managed to make some progress in getting back the control of the Arm China venture. The company reports that the Arm China board has voted to replace Allen Wu unanimously and appoint Dr. Renchen Liu alongside Eric Chen as two co-CEOs. Dr. Liu is a vice dean at the Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen, and the agency in Shenzhen has registered him as the company leader and general manager. Eric Chen is a managing partner at the SoftBank Vision Fund, helping Dr. Liu with business operations. Later after this decision, Allen Wu posted a letter signed by 430 employees that stated that there were law enforcement errors in his replacement process and that he would continue to lead the company. It is a matter of time before Chinese authorities take this action a step further and see more details.
Source:
Reuters
Not everything is terrible, as the SoftBank operation managed to make some progress in getting back the control of the Arm China venture. The company reports that the Arm China board has voted to replace Allen Wu unanimously and appoint Dr. Renchen Liu alongside Eric Chen as two co-CEOs. Dr. Liu is a vice dean at the Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen, and the agency in Shenzhen has registered him as the company leader and general manager. Eric Chen is a managing partner at the SoftBank Vision Fund, helping Dr. Liu with business operations. Later after this decision, Allen Wu posted a letter signed by 430 employees that stated that there were law enforcement errors in his replacement process and that he would continue to lead the company. It is a matter of time before Chinese authorities take this action a step further and see more details.
16 Comments on Arm Retakes Control of Chinese Branch Office, New CEOs Appointed
www.ijiwei.com/n/816680
BTW it seems like ARM China is going to contest the decision, since in most scenario you cannot change/apply for a new stamp without the old stamp, at least that's what I heard from friend doing business in China.
Edit: so I asked someone in the industry quickly and they say, and I quote:
From the day it is founded ARM China considered itself as an independent company, protected by permanent cross licensing agreement and sole right to sell ARM product in China. Even if ARM UK stop licensing ARM China, ARM China can continue developing its own ARM base processor and sell it outside China with ARM branding. Considering recent changes in ARM UK board members many people in Chinese Chip industry also consider it to be functionally controlled by United State, therefore view any attempts in changing ARM China leadership to be hostile.
I don't translate very well, and takes this comment with huge load of salts.
There is a story how the US company behind the Segway Scooter did the same thing, but the Government passed all the data on to a Chinese company (ninebot) who started mass producing the scooters and selling them globally... They sold so many that they made enough money to buy out the US company Segway.
So China might be able to keep working with the name/brand but only in China and they sure wont have access to any updated ARM technologies if ARM(UK) do decide to completely sever ties with China based ARM.
Since the US Government stopped US companies (and attempted to stop some foreign companies) from trading with China, China has had to develop its own technologies to cover for the short fall, but they are still many years behind from having a product that competes with ARM, Mediatek, Qualcomm or Intel/AMD etc etc etc. AFAIK
This is another reason why Taiwan is so important to China. A lot of chip manufacturers are based in TW. Hence why companies like Intel are trying to move some production AWAY from TW. If China wants to brawl - Production and distribution will be interrupted.
--- This is my rough understanding of how it works over there. Other members might be able to go more into detail.
It has certainly shown the issues of having a chinese branch.
Just in case it is still not clear, the link on TPU, which is linked to Reuter, upon clicking said link, you go to Reuter, but on Reuter website, they(Reuter) didn't quote a direct link to source material, only a reference.
I don't think anyone would stick around without a paycheck.
still crazy stuff
www.arm.com/company/news/2022/04/arm-china-majority-shareholders-announce-company-corporate-governance-issue-has-been-resolved
Sure it's not directly linked, but not impossible to locate an official source.
I was referring to this:It is in later part of Reuters article, the news from ijiwei.com also included the detail of Reuters claim that:Both are not part of ARM Ltd statements.
As far as China being cheap labor??? Not anymore. Again, IMHO go to Vietnam, India, or other Asian Countries than doing business over there. Corporations of today are just too greedy and too lazy to move their resources from China to another country. That is why we are having the current issues we are having right now. It's always the peanut counters that messes things up.
I have and will spend the small increase in price knowing that I won't get ripped off on not only by the quality of work, but the less of a chance that my IP's will be stolen.