By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – Nvidia stock (NASDAQ:NVDA) was up more than 1% in Friday’s premarket trading after a disclosure that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had bought stock and call options on the chipmaker.
Official disclosures show that Pelosi made the transactions, worth as much as $1.5 million, on July 23rd. The trading activities of Pelosi and her family have caught the eye before, most notably when her husband took a position in Slack stock before the software company agreed to be bought by Salesforce (NYSE:CRM).
Members of Congress routinely trade stock on their own account but are compelled to disclose major transactions.
The news, interpreted (without any substantiating evidence) by some as suggestive of the company enjoying a privileged relationship with lawmakers, outweighed less positive news released slightly earlier in the U.K., where the Competition and Markets Authority warned that its proposed $40 billion acquisition of chip designer ARM would have materially negative effects on competition.
According to reports, several chipmakers including Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), had objected to the deal, saying they would be disadvantaged by the deal.
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority agreed and said it does not believe any form of behavioral remedy offered by the two companies would address its concerns.
Nvidia, with annual revenue of $16.68 billion, is a leading manufacturer of chips, particularly those used for graphics in computers and in graphics processing units used in data center servers.
ARM is a holder of multiple IP technologies that go into designing of chips. It primarily supplies IP relating to central processing units to semiconductor suppliers and systems-on-chip developers globally. Such suppliers, including Nvidia, use ARM’s IP to produce semiconductor chips and related products for a variety of applications.
ARM estimates 70% of the world’s population engages with ARM-based technology.
ARM also has a joint venture, headquartered in Shanghai, with Chinese private equity firm Hopu Investments. Nvidia will need the approval of the authorities there and many experts don’t see that approval coming through either.
Nvidia had set an 18-month deadline last September while proposing the acquisition.
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