Circuit City caves in

The financial crisis continues to wreak havoc: electronic retailer Circuit City, with 1500 stores across US and Canada, applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. At home, Naspers has ended the planned auction for the sale of MWeb South Africa.

* Very good interim numbers from African Cellular Towers.
* Good full-year figures from Dimension Data.
* Good interim figures from Vodacom.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Paracon.
* A positive trading update from Naspers.
* A negative trading update from UCS.
* Intervate, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, bought Cape Town-based Synergy Corporate Technologies, another Microsoft Gold Partner.
* Israel-based Foxcom, a division of One Path Networks, has entered the South African telecommunications market, establishing its operations in Durban. It has been involved in the local market for 10 years.
* Naspers has terminated the planned auction for the sale of MWeb South Africa.
* James Herbst was appointed CEO of Huge Group; James Ramatsui was appointed chairman of Belay Solutions; and Anton Potgieter was appointed executive chairman of Huge Group (was CEO).
* Fensta Lediga, non-executive chairman of Huge Group, resigned.

* Satisfactory full year figures from Telecom Egypt.
* Satisfactory quarterly numbers from Maroc Telecom.
* Mixed interim figures from Safaricom, with revenue up 20% but profit down just under 15%.
* Telkom SA acquired MWeb Africa for $63 million, and 75% of MWeb Namibia from MultiChoice Africa and MIH Holdings respectively.
* Orascom Egypt and Telecom Egypt are to shut down their landline joint venture in Algeria.
* ADCEL, a data service company that will help the public access information about any company in Uganda free of charge, opened in the country.

Worldwide IT spending will slow to 2.6% in 2009, down from the original 5.9% predicted earlier this year, according to IDC.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* CA purchased Eurekify, a pioneer in identity and role management.
* Perot Systems, a provider of IT services and business solutions, bought Tellurian Networks, a managed services hosting provider of electronic medical records and practice management applications.
* VMware acquired France-based Trango Virtual processors, a company specialising in virtualisation software for mobile phones.
* NTT DoCoMo made a $2.7 billion investment (26%) in Tata Teleservices.
* Motorola has sold off its Malaysian R&D Centre to Satyam (India).
* Electronic retailer Circuit City has applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The struggling retailer had over 700 stores in the United States and close to 800 stores and dealer outlets in Canada, employing about 45 000 people.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from BT Group, Capgemini, CSC (although profit up over fivefold), Enterasys Networks.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Cable & Wireless (half-year), T-Systems, Telefonica, Vivendi SA and Vodafone (half-year).
* Mixed quarterly figures from NetApp (revenue up 15%, profit down 40%).
* Quarterly losses from BearingPoint, Intelsat, Nortel Networks, Siemens and Tiscali.

* Worldwide IT spending will slow to 2.6% in 2009, down from the original 5.9% predicted earlier this year, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 3.1%
* Nasdaq: Down 7.9%
* Top SA share movements: Alliance Mining (-11.1%), Beget Holdings (+50%), Celcom (+13.3%), Datatec (-13%), Dialogue (-11.1%), DTH (-37.5%), Faritec (-12.5%), Paracon (+12%), Poynting (+20%), Simeka (-11.6%) and Zaptronix (+12.5%)

Forbes has released its listing of America's largest private companies. From a technology perspective, notable entries include CDW at number 34, Freescale Semiconductor at 52, Avaya at 65, SunGard Data Systems at 71 and Kingston Technology at 79.