Former Rolls-Royce and Arm CEO Warren East speaks at a technology event in London on June 13, 2022.
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CAMBRIDGE, UK — The UK has done a poor job of commercializing global technology businesses and needs a change of mindset among its investor base to win on the world stage, says the former CEO of a British chip design company arm said Tuesday.
Warren East, who led Arm from 1994 to 2013, said in a keynote speech at Cambridge Technology Week that some people criticized the UK’s weak economic growth and low per capita GDP, which was a source of “embarrassment” for the country.
He added that companies that achieve scale in the UK often tend to relocate from the UK or list in countries such as the US due to the difficulty of achieving global reach in the UK.
“I think we have a lot to offer in terms of innovation and technology in the UK,” East told an audience at Cambridge Technology Week. However, he added: “We often fail to deliver as much global business as that commitment implies.”
East also previously served as chief executive of the British aerospace engineering giant rolls royce. He currently serves as a non-executive director on the Board of Directors of Tokamak Energy.
East said the UK “needs to get commercialization right”, adding that too much innovation is created in the UK and then exported to the rest of the world.
“Sadly, there is a common story of all the wonderful things that are made in the UK and then commercialized and exploited elsewhere,” East said. He added that he had no “magic bullet” to solve the problem, but suggested the UK needed to encourage more “risk appetite” to support high-growth technology companies.
“We are often told that the problem is not with new startups, but with scale,” East said. He explained that capital pools are deeper in the U.S. and “American investors have a higher risk appetite than in the U.S.” explain
East noted that the British entrepreneurial community and venture capital firms have been pushing for changes to capital market rules that would allow pension funds to invest more in new startups and “stimulate risk appetite in the UK”
“Fortunately, I think we can expect more of this in the coming years,” East told attendees of the Cambridge event. However, he added: “Businesses can’t guarantee this will happen and can’t wait for the rules to change.”
Arm’s chip architecture, which powers most of the world’s smartphone processors, last year listed on Nasdaq in the U.S., throwing a wrench into British officials and the London Stock Exchange’s ambitions to host more tech listings in Britain. A major blow.
The company is still majority-owned by the Japanese tech giant Softbank.
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