SK hynix in talks with others to jointly buy Arm from SoftBank

SK hynix co-CEO Park Jung-ho speaks during a shareholder meeting on Wednesday in Icheon, Gyeonggi. [YONHAP]

SK hynix is considering the purchase of Arm, the British chip company owned by Japan's SoftBank.

It is "currently in talks with other corporations to jointly invest into Arm for the acquisition," SK hynix co-CEO Park Jung-ho told reporters after an annual general meeting held at the company's headquarters in Icheon, Gyeonggi. He declined to specify the entities with which the discussions are being held.

He went on to note that a consortium is ideal since an acquisition by a single company could be too disruptive in the semiconductor industry.

"If a specific entity is to wholly benefit from the acquisition of Arm, it won't be acceptable in the semiconductor ecosystem," Park said, "This is why we are seeking to jointly buy the controlling stake."

Nvidia failed in its own efforts to buy Arm due to regulatory concerns about the buyer cutting off competitors from key technologies owned by the acquisition target.

It announced an agreement in 2020 with SoftBank to acquire Arm for $40 billion and backed out in February.

Arm is the top player in designing application processors for mobile phones, while SK hynix is focused on the production of memory, such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips.

BY PARK EUN-JEE [park.eunjee@joongang.co.kr]