Chip designer Imagination Technologies Group plc announced late Friday, Sept. 22, that it will be acquired by Chinese private equity firm Canyon Bridge Capital Partners LLC for about £550 million ($745 million).
Shares surged as much as 30% on Monday.
Canyon Bridge will pay 182 pence per Imagination share, a 41.6% premium over Imagination’s Thursday closing price of 128.5 pence per share and a 47.4% premium over Imagination’s closing price of 123.5 pence per share on June 21, the day before Imagination announced that it would sell itself months after losing its biggest customer, Apple Inc. (AAPL) .
The sale does not include Imagination’s embedded processor unit MIPS. California-based semiconductor investor Tallwood Venture Capital will pay $65 million for the unit.
Imagination’s announcement came days after President Donald Trump’s Sept. 13 order blocking Canyon Ridge from its $1.3 billion acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor Corp. (LSCC) , citing national security risks, following the recommendation of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (Cfius).
It’s also an inauspicious time for a Chinese acquisition of a European technology company, following European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s comments earlier this month advocating for greater rights of oversight at European Union level of deals with China, due to both security concerns and the lack of reciprocal access for investors in the Chinese market.
Perhaps attempting to minimize the fallout from the acquisition, Canyon Bridge said it would maintain Imagination’s headquarters in the U.K. and would not “make any changes as regards the continuing employment of employees and management,” including their pension benefits.
Canyon Bridge said Friday that it has about $1.5 billion in assets under management, committed by its initial anchor limited partner, state-owned Yitai Capital Ltd. The firm listed only the abortive Lattice acquisition and “a minority investment of approximately $10 million in a US-based technology company” among its prior investments.
During the year ending April 30, Imagination generated an adjusted operating profit of £29.2 million on sales from continuing operations of £145.2 million.
