With rumours growing about a possible move for Imagination Canyon has now confirmed a bid with a price offer of 182p per share, valuing the UK technology company at £550 million, this compares to a current market valuation of £370 million.
According to sources significant progress had been made during talks between Canyon Bridge and Imagination over the past few weeks.
Canyon Bridge’s interest in buying Imagination comes after the UK chip company announced that it had lost a significant contract to supply Apple with graphics technology for the company’s iPhones and iPads earlier this year.
Imagination is currently in a legal dispute with Apple, with the British company telling the stock market last month that it had made "no progress" in resolving it.
Canyon Bridge has recently had an attempted acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor, a manufacturer of specialist microchips, for which it offered $1.3bn last year rejected by President Trump and this proposed deal could face UK regulatory hurdles due in part to the government’s proposals to reform the rules governing mergers and takeovers.
A forthcoming green paper is expected to set out the Government's thinking on these issues but sources within the City of London believe that this Beijing-backed bid for Imagination could force ministers to extract firm commitments about British technology jobs from Canyon Bridge.
In a move that appears designed to pre-empt UK regulatory attention Canyon Bridge has already released a statement in which it said that it had, "no plans to make any changes to the continuing employment of employees and management,” or “to change the principal locations of Imagination’s places of business, or redeploy any fixed assets of Imagination.”
