Just before Christmas, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak arranged a bilateral video conference with Masayoshi Son in another attempt to persuade the powerful SoftBank boss to bring the chip design firm, Arm, back to the UK stock market.
People involved in the call describe the conversation between the politician and Son, whose investment company acquired Arm for $32bn in 2016, as positive. Sunak, the third prime minister to try and persuade SoftBank to consider relisting Arm in London, talked of the importance of the firm and how the UK wanted to become a tech superpower. Son, in turn, recognised the significance of the Cambridge-based tech success story to the UK.