CA head calls it a day

EMC made two acquisitions last week, and there was a surprise retirement announcement from the CEO of CA. At home, the ICT market was quiet, with a handful of financial results.

* Mixed year-end figures from Metrofile, with revenue up 12%, but profit down 29%; and Rectron, with revenue marginally down, but profit slightly up.
* Mediocre year-end numbers from CompuClearing.
* Interim losses by Dialogue Group, with revenue also down 10%; and Ifca Technologies, with revenue also down considerably.
* Positive trading updates from EOH and Pinnacle.
* A negative trading update from Poynting Antennas.
* Masana Technologies, an IBM systems integrator business partner, a supplier to the Johannesburg municipality and recently featured on Carte Blanche, has applied for voluntary liquidation. It is rumoured that IBM has taken over its operations.
* Craig Alexander, CEO of Square One, and Ralph Collis, chairman of AdaptIT, have resigned.

* Essar Group (India) has invested in yu, a Kenyan mobile network, through the acquisition of Econet Wireless's holding in that company. Essar Telecom Kenya now has an 80% stake.
* Portugal Telecom and Telefonica have each agreed to sell off their 32.18% stakes in Meditel (Morocco), to local Meditel shareholders, for EUR800 million.

Look out for further developments regarding the MTN/Bharti deal.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Adobe purchased Business Catalyst Systems, the developer of GoodBarry e-commerce software.
* EMC bought FastScale Technology, a provider of software platforms and solutions for next-generation data centres.
* EMC acquired Kazeon Systems, an eDiscovery software provider for corporations, legal service providers, government entities and law firms.
* Informatica purchased Austria-based Agent Logic, a complex event processing software provider.
* A group of private investors have acquired Skype, currently owned by eBay, for $2 billion (65%). Earlier this year, eBay was considering hiving off Skype via an IPO.
* Alcatel Lucent plans to raise up to EUR1 billion through the issue of convertible bonds to help re-finance its debt.
* Samsung has dropped its bid for SanDisk.
* Good interim numbers from Compal Electronics, one of the largest technology companies in Taiwan.
* Satisfactory interim numbers from Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industries), Taiwan's largest technology company.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from SAIC and Vivendi.
* Mediocre quarterly results from ADC Telecommunications, Sopra Group and Steria, one of France's largest IT services companies.
* Mixed interim figures from Computacenter (UK), with revenue slightly down, but profit up 19%.
* Quarterly losses from GFI Informatique, a French IT services company.
* Gilles Delfassy has been appointed president and CEO of ST-Ericsson, the Ericsson and STMicroelectronics joint venture; Eran Gorev was named president and CEO of Alvarion; and Rajeev Suri was appointed CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks.
* Simon Beresford-Wylie, CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks; and Alain Dutheil, CEO of ST-Ericsson, resigned.
* Dennis Strigl, COO of Verizon Communications, and John Swainson, CEO of CA, have retired. Swainson's retirement will take effect from 31 December.

* International:
* The outcome of the discussions with France Telecom, Telefonica and Vodafone regarding Deutsche Telekom's disposal of T-Mobile UK.
* The formation of a joint venture by Cisco and EMC to provide technology services.
* The acquisition by AT&T of a minority stake in BSNL (India).
* The winner in the battle for Nortel's stake in its joint venture with LG Electronics (LG-Nortel). The four short-listed companies are Alcatel Lucent, a South Korean investment company, a private equity fund associated with JP Morgan, and Sony Ericsson.
* Africa:
* The winner in the bid for Nitel (Nigeria). Thirteen parties have expressed interest in acquiring a 75% stake in the company, including Etisalat, Globacom (Nigeria), MTN's Nigerian arm, MTNL India and a group that includes Telefonica.
* South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the MTN/Bharti deal.

* Q209 server sales dropped 30% compared to Q208, reports IDC. All the five top players remained the same, with IBM still holding first place.
* The worldwide external controller-based storage market declined 15.7% in Q209, with EMC still retaining the number one slot, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Down 2.1%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.5%
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (-22.2%), Dialogue Group (+36.4%), Faritec (-16.7%), FoneWorx (+11.8%), Pinnacle (+22.8%), Poynting Antennas (+66.7%), SecureData (+18%), Silverbridge (+14.5%), Vox Telecom (+12.7%) and Zaptronix (-25%)

Infosys Technologies has been named as the number one company in the Wall Street Journal Asia's most admired Indian corporation list. Bharti Airtel, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services were also in the top 10.