Imagination Technologies agrees to Canyon Bridge sale

Imagination Technologies has agreed a sale to China-backed private equity firm Canyon Bridge in a deal valuing the British chipmaker at about 550 million pounds, the Financial Times reports.  The Hertfordshire-based designer of mobile graphics processors put itself up for sale in June, soon after Apple, its largest customer and one of its biggest shareholders, said it would phase out use of its technology in products including the iPhone. Friday’s 182 pence per share offer is little more than a quarter of Imagination’s 2012 stock price peak of 712.5 pence, which valued it at close to 2 billion pounds.  Just a week and a half ago, Canyon Bridge, which is headquartered in Palo Alto, California and is backed by state-owned Chinese fund Yitai Capital, saw its $1.3bn attempt to acquire American chipmaker Lattice Semiconductor blocked by President Donald Trump over national security concerns.