Boris is tech illiterate, says Arm co-founder Hermann Hauser

A co-founder of Arm has criticised Britain’s ‘technology illiterate politicians’ amid fears the firm will list its shares in New York rather than London.

Hermann Hauser, one of the entrepreneurs who spun off the chip designer from Acorn Computers in 1990, said MPs have only recently woken up to the importance of supporting UK technology.

And he called on Arm’s owner Softbank to float Arm on the stock market in London as well as New York in a so-called ‘dual-listing’ rather than just in the US.

The Japanese group bought Cambridge-based Arm for £24billion in 2016 but is planning to sell it through a stock market float having seen a proposed sale to US giant Nvidia collapse.

New York is the favoured destination for the float but no formal decision has been made.

Hauser told the BBC: ‘Technology sovereignty has become a key issue for the decade, and even the technology illiterate politicians like [Boris] Johnson and the majority of Parliament have woken up to the fact that it is important to support the local technology companies with local stock exchanges.’