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UK hi-tech company ARM Holdings has been sold to Japanese firm SoftBank - but should we care?

'STORM OVER JAPAN RAID ON WORLD CLASS UK TECH GIANT', ran the p1 headline in the Daily Mail.¹ The story described how, for £24bn, top UK microchip technology company ARM was to be sold to the Japanese firm SoftBank.

Hard Won, Easily Squandered

Whilst one Member of Parliament likened the deal to a football club flogging off its best players, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, claimed that the deal would turn "a great British company into a global phenomenon" (in fact, it already was a 'global phenomenon').

He was clearly anxious to cash in on what was promoted as the great advantages to the UK economy of new world-class deals resulting from the decision to pull out of the European Union. Shares inevitably soared sharply upwards as investors interested in making money licked their lips.

But this deal wasn't about selling abroad a quantity of finished products (e.g. ten million chips). It was about the one-time disposal of what is called 'intellectual property rights' held by ARM - the hard-won skills and know-how across a wide range of technical disciplines required to bring such products to market. The long-term worth of such know-how can amount to hundreds of millions of pounds over decades.

During the last few days a technically naïve political class - goaded on by the press - has, too late, begun to sense the importance of such a decision and, at the time of writing, efforts are being made to claw back the deal.

This deal wasn't about selling a quantity of finished products – it was the one-time disposal of hard-won skills and know-how.

Common Folly

Tragically, such deals are now commonplace in Great Britain. They go largely unreported, making news only in the financial press. They are commonplace because the nation is unaware of the value of the work done by skilled scientists and engineers collaborating closely, as in this case with Cambridge University, with bodies having universally acclaimed academic skills.

Industry in the UK is generally privately owned and thus able to act in its own interest. In the USA, in France and Germany, state oversight bodies are set up to ensure that technology essential for a nation's future wellbeing is protected, and to scrutinise such deals to permit or disallow them. But not in the UK.

Historic Precedent: Rolls-Royce Jet Engines

Careless disposal of such knowledge for short term financial or political gain began with the sale of a few Rolls-Royce jet engines, the brain child of Frank Whittle (later Sir Frank), to the Soviet Union just after the war. In 1946, Soviet jet-engine designers asked Russia's leader Josef Stalin to acquire proprietary technical information on Britain's jet engines needed to leapfrog the technically steep, expensive and lengthy learning curve associated with the huge, new technology challenges and so position itself into technical equality or superiority with the West.

The Russian Government approached Sir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade and a Cabinet Minister in the post-war Labour Government, who prior to that had been Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Soviet engineers visited England to negotiate for the rights to build the engine originally designed by Whittle and his small Power Jets company, which had built the first Allied jet engines under the most severe financial constraints. Whittle's engine technology had subsequently been taken over by Rolls-Royce for development and mass-production to power the very first Allied jet fighters, the UK's straight-winged Meteors and Vampires.

Careless deals disposing of knowledge for short term financial or political gain are now commonplace in Britain.

Agreement was reached, and a handful of engines were supplied. Russian engineers rapidly reverse-engineered the design to produce their own version. The pay-off occurred in the early 1950s, when American heavy bombers tasked with destroying North Korea's industrial infrastructure were attacked by a new Russian swept-wing, transonic fighter (the MiG-15) powered by the new engines. The West had nothing to touch it. The Americans lost aircrews and were very upset.

More Recently: Astra-Zeneca vs Pfizer

A host of innovative, high-tech technology, the UK's life-blood, has subsequently been sold off over the years to the benefit of company directors and investors.

One deal was remarkable because its directors refused to give way to would-be hostile take-overs. In 2014, pharmaceutical company Astra-Zeneca was approached by US firm Pfizer to accept an offer. Top-level UK Government officials, including Prime Minister David Cameron, cheered Pfizer from the side-lines. Their argument was that in a global marketplace it doesn't matter who owns what. The battle became prime-time 'must see' TV coverage of the Government's Select Committee in which the US company was described as an asset-stripper.

Astra's directors—among them Swedish chairman Leif Johansson and French chief executive Pascal Soriot, who could between them have made around £60m from the deal - steadfastly resisted four successive offers by Pfizer's Scottish-born chairman and chief executive Ian Read. Finally, after some five or six weeks in the glare of knowledgeable and intensive press and BBC commentary, Pfizer admitted defeat and said that it would not again attempt to take over Astra. The American offer, finally standing at an eye-watering £70bn, collapsed.

A Fool and His Money

The Bible has much to say in warning about such deals. Abraham grew immensely wealthy because he was a man of faith and recognised the source of his wealth. Deuteronomy 8:17-18 says that the true dispenser of wealth is God himself (1 Chronicles 29:12 says much the same thing).

Solomon (2 Chron 1:12) was promised wealth, riches and honour such as no other man before him had enjoyed and no other later one would have – because he had first chosen to seek the way of wisdom. The benefits of wisdom are extolled in the Book of Proverbs, which promises prosperity for all who seek her (Prov 3:2).

Precious assets are given by God for the good of the nation, not to satisfy the greed of a few individuals.

God's people are not to give away what he has given to them. Proverbs 5:15-16 gives us the picture of a man drinking water from his own well and not allowing his springs of water to overflow casually onto public squares. These water supplies, precious in a semi-tropical environment, were intended to bless the local community, not to be scattered around and lost.

Selling off the precious assets that God has given to Britain may satisfy the greed of individuals in the short-term, but its long-term effects are to reduce the wealth of the nation and to reduce national ability to help its citizens and bless others in less developed parts of the world. This is surely sinful in the eyes of God.

References

1 18 July 2016.

In the first issue of Prophecy Today, 30 years ago, we carried an article under the title “A World of Inequality” which said that more than 10 million children had died of starvation during the previous year, 1984.

There were 500 million people in Africa suffering from malnutrition. It was at a time when huge swathes of eastern Africa were suffering from years of drought. 1 million people had died of starvation in Ethiopia and 7 million people in that country were living under the threat of starvation.

From 1985 to 2015

Prophecy Today joined others in sending out an urgent appeal for aid from the rich countries of the West to be sent to people facing death. In July 1985 Bob Geldof responded with the first ever Live Aid when pop stars freely gave a concert at Wembley to raise funds for the starving. Later that same year Comic Relief was founded on Christmas Day 1985 which was later linked with Sport Relief and Children in Need. These events, attracting huge television audiences, have raised hundreds of millions of pounds which have undoubtedly brought relief to many communities struggling with poverty.

"World poverty was halved between 1990 and 2010, according to the World Bank. But the world of inequality still exists."

World poverty was halved between 1990 and 2010, according to the World Bank.¹ But this does not mean that poverty has been eliminated. The world of inequality still exists despite the immense amount of aid that is poured into developing countries. One billion people still live on less than $1.25 a day.² Most of the world’s population still lack basic services which people in the developed nations take for granted – access to safe water, healthcare, electricity, schools and adequate food.

Inequality persists

In 1985 we said:

The rich nations use their muscle to protect their prosperity. They control the world’s capital investment. They control the price of basic commodities on the world markets, such as grain, seeds and fertilisers. They have a monopoly of technology which they deny to third world countries thus keeping them dependent on the West and limiting competition. They control interest rates and thus ensure that any aid given to poor countries comes back to the rich nations to increase their overflowing abundance.

That situation still exists today and should be a serious warning to us because justice and righteousness are part of the nature of God. When we deny justice to the powerless we are actually offending God who says “For I, the Lord, love justice, I hate robbery and iniquity” (Isa 61:8). There are plenty of instances in history where nations or communities have brought disaster upon themselves through injustice and oppression. Sodom and Gomorrah are two good examples.

"When we deny justice to the powerless, we are actually offending God"

Most people think Sodom and Gomorrah came to disaster because of sexual deviance but the Prophet Ezekiel says something different. He says there was another reason why God destroyed those two great cities. “This was the sin of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen” (Eze 16:49).

Western wealth offensive to God

What are the things that are most offensive to a God of justice and righteousness? They are surely the vast wealth controlled by 1% of the world’s population while so many struggle with poverty. The enormous amount of money spent on slimming aids and reducing obesity in the rich nations while others die of starvation must be deeply offensive to God. He said to the Prophet Isaiah that the kind of justice and righteousness he wants is “to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wander with shelter – when you see the naked, clothe him...Then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rearguard” (Isa 58:7-8).

"The nations have the power and the technology in our generation to feed the hungry and to care for all people, but we choose to indulge ourselves"

The monumental amount of money spent on weapons of destruction by the nations is deeply offensive to God. We are more concerned with destroying one another than with caring for the poor and those who are powerless to provide for themselves. “The Lord is angry with all nations; his wrath is upon all their armies. He will totally destroy them, he will give them over to slaughter” (Isa 34:2).

The nations have the power and the technology in our generation to feed the hungry and to care for all people, but we choose to indulge ourselves, to pile up wealth that we can never use such as the grain mountains, the butter mountains, the meat mountains of Europe and America. We choose to maintain vast armies and vast stocks of weaponry and we turn a blind eye to the poor, the powerless and the hungry.

What will a God of justice and righteousness do with this generation?

References

1 World Bank Poverty Overview, 2011 data.

2 Ibid.