BRITISH chipmaker Arm has sold its cybersecurity division Trustonic to a private equity firm run by Tory party donor Edmund Lazarus.

EMK Capital last week said it has snapped up the cyber firm from Arm and Gemalto, a Dutch cyber company now owned by Thales Group.

Trustonic, which was founded in 2012 as a joint venture between Arm and Gemalto, specialises in security for mobile devices and apps.

Its platform, which provides a secure area to store and process sensitive data, is embedded in more than 2bn devices worldwide.

Arm's plans to offload the joint venture, first reported last year by the Sunday Telegraph, comes amid a shakeup by Softbank following its £24bn takeover in 2016.

Softbank founder Masayoshi Son has said he plans to re-list Arm within the next five years, while Arm boss Simon Segars has outlined more ambitious plans for a float in 2023.

Despite its success at winning clients, Trustonic has failed to turn a profit and the firm most recent accounts show an €8.6m (£7.4m) pretax loss on revenue of €9.7m in 2018. EMK Capital was founded in 2017 by Lazarus, who is friends with cabinet minister Michael Gove and a major donor to the Tory party.

In December it bought a majority stake in Williams Advanced Engineering, the tech division of the Williams Formula One team.

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