Nvidia may walk away from $40 billion Arm acquisition

[mbrowne5061]

Antitrust regulators can block this kind of thing, also.

No, they almost certainly won't. As long as they don't try to intermingle the company's finances and/or corporate structures, anti-trust laws are unlikely to forbid one company buying a controlling stake in another.
Typically, yes, that leads to a merger. But not always. If you want to see an example of this, just look at Match Group. They own nearly every single online dating service out there via stock ownership, but no one does a thing because each service is "independent".

 

[mbrowne5061]

Your guessing of what may or may not happen in the future doesn't even make sense. First of all, why does ARM need to be sold in the first place?

Because SoftBank is divesting from tech in general. They went on a shopping spree ~10 years ago, and have been selling those companies (most, for a tasty profit) for the last couple of years. Boston Dynamics was another such company that SoftBank bought, and sold (likely for a profit, but both the purchase and sale prices were never disclosed).

Secondly, whoever tries to buy ARM next will go through the exact same process nVidia had to go through.

Not if they buy it via stock purchases after ARM IPOs, especially if they use multiple third parties to complete the transaction over time. No regulator can stop that, and as long as the result is just some company controlling ARM via share holder agenda items (including voting in people to the board of director that will do what the shareholders ask, without putting it to a vote), no one will do anything again, either.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Antitrust regulators can block this kind of thing, also.

Theoretically they can, but in practice, they don't.