From sensors to smartphones, excitement builds for a tech firm you'd likely never heard

of.

Hello, you're listening to the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service.

I'm Vivian Noona stepping in for Leana Bern.

Good morning.

Arm Holdings, the British-based chip designer, will close its order book a day early today,

after being massively oversubscribed ahead of its public listing expected this week.

The Cambridge-based firm, owned by Japan's Softbank, is seeking up to $51 per share, potentially

making it the most valuable company to list in New York in two years.

Simon Jack is the BBC's business editor in London.

Arm Holdings was born in Cambridge, England, and has become the crown jewel of British technology.

And also one of the most important companies in the world that you may never have heard

of.

It's chips.

It's microchips that it designs are in just about every smartphone in the world, so it's

a really, really important technology company.

It has been privately held by a Japanese owner since it was bought, locked stock and barrel

off the London Stock Exchange seven years ago, so it's an opportunity for big fund managers

and others for them to own a piece of a very important technology company.

And we are seeing a kind of race, aren't we, in this technology, particularly when it comes

to chip design and development.

That's happening really between the US and its allies and China.

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