Otherwise it would be pointless having them in the first place, you'd just get out of it (if you wanted to) with some creative corporate governance.
[I used to work at Arm, but not on creative corporate governance.]
> you'd just get out of it (if you wanted to) with some creative corporate governance
... aand you've just "discovered" how large companies routinely get out of their commitments to politicians.
Plausibly the obligation on Softbank could require them, when selling, to require the new buyer agree to the same obligation.
Brexit might give us back 'control' from Brussels but does not exactly give us the upper hand in commercial negotiations with the US.
Now, I'm sure that Nvidia will want the deal to close smoothly and will thus be willing to give similar guarantees. Of course the trick is that these guarantees usually (and sensibly) come with a time limit, which also suits governments, so don't mean that much in fine.
Hasn't Nvidia has actually increased those guarantees with everything they have agreed on for buying ARM?
I could quote the whole post, but to satisfy UK regulators, NVIDIA committed to:
> NVIDIA will expand Arm’s R&D presence in Cambridge, UK, by establishing a world-class AI research and education center, and building an Arm/NVIDIA-powered AI supercomputer for groundbreaking research
which is much more than Softbank ever did. And the list of things they commited to goes on, and probably will continue to increase as the US and China get their says on this.
> At that time, Softbank announced it had agreed to legally binding commitments to increase investment, headcount and preserve its headquarters in the UK.
> It is not too late for the government to impose conditions, but conversations on whether to impose them or what they might be have not even started.