SINGAPORE (July 20): Four Japanese equity funds available for sale in Singapore have a stake in Japanese internet and telecoms conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp, according to data from Morningstar Direct.

Softbank fell 10.3% in Tokyo trading on Tuesday, as investors responded negatively to the company’s plans to acquire UK-based semiconductor company ARM Holdings plc for US$31 billion (S$42 billion) in cash.

According to Dealogic, the deal is in line to be the second largest M&A deal globally in the semiconductor industry.

Softbank, founded and currently helmed by Masayoshi Son, is an S$82 billion conglomerate with holdings that include Sprint, the fourth-largest U.S. mobile carrier, and Yahoo Japan. Softbank was also one of the early investors in e-commerce giant Alibaba, a bet which paid off handsomely when the company raised US$25 billion in its 2014 initial public offering.

Meanwhile, ARM Holdings was founded in 1990 and is the world’s leading semiconductor intellectual property (IP) company. Instead of manufacturing processors, ARM designs them and licenses IP to many of the world’s leading semiconductor and systems companies.

The fund with the largest exposure to Softbank is Nicholas Price’s S$158 million Fidelity Japan Aggressive, in Morningstar’s Japan Small/Mid-Cap Equity category, which had a 3.84% holding as at March 31. The Fidelity Japan Aggressive fund has gained 4.1% this year. The largest fund holding SoftBank is Hiroyuki Ito’s S$460 million Fidelity Japan fund, which has fallen 7.8% this year. Morningstar gives the Fidelity Japan fund a Bronze rating.

On the proposed acquisition, Son said: “We have long admired ARM as a world renowned and highly respected technology company that is by some distance the market-leader in its field. ARM will be an excellent strategic fit within the SoftBank group as we invest to capture the very significant opportunities provided by the “Internet of Things”.