Microsoft bids for Yahoo

The international ICT world was dominated last week by Microsoft's bid for Yahoo, while at home the market was extremely quiet.

* Ansys acquired Quadsoft, a developer of control and communications systems, for over R3.4 million.
* Cornastone bought ACI South Africa, the local operation of electronic payments systems company ACI Worldwide.
* Knowledge Integration Dynamics invested in Fivaz Consulting, a BI consulting company. Following this deal, the latter will be renamed IT & Business Services SA.
* RMB Corvest and Safika Investments made a 49% investment in Micros Fidelio SA, the local arm of Micros Systems, a hospitality POS systems supplier. The deal also included Computerised Lodging Systems and Micros Specialised Solutions, affiliated companies of Micros Fidelio SA.
* Simeka sold off Spec Systems, its manufacturing division, for R10 million.
* Simeka closed its repair division, Independent Computer Support Services.
* Peter Vieira was appointed director of TallyGenicom SA, following the resignation of Dave Terry.

* Very good Q4 numbers from Maroc Telecom.
* Celcom purchased Nile Com, an exclusive MTN dealer in Uganda.
* Orascom Telecom (Egypt) announced it has been awarded the first mobile licence in North Korea, via its subsidiary CHEO Technology, in which the North Korean government owns 25%.
* Steve Nossel resigned as Intel GM for sub-Saharan Africa.

Fortune magazine has just published its 2008 '100 best companies to work for' list, with Google remaining at number one.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Amazon acquired Audible, a provider of digital audio-books, for $300 million.
* Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, the price being a 62% premium over the current share price. If concluded, the deal will be one of the largest in the ICT sector and certainly the largest by Microsoft.
* Nokia acquired Trolltech ASA, a provider of cross-platform software development frameworks and applications platforms, for $153 million.
* The Lenovo Group sold off its mobile handset business to Hony Capital, a private equity group, for $100 million.
* Excellent quarterly results from VMware.
* Very good quarterly figures from Amazon and Software AG.
* Good quarterly numbers from CA, Corning, EMC, Google, L-3 Communications, Lenovo, Sony, TSMC and Vodafone.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from ACS, Canon, Eastman Kodak, Fujitsu, Matsushita Electric (Panasonic), SanDisk (back in the black), Ricoh, Sharp, Toshiba, Verizon Communications and Vivendi.
* Mediocre quarterly results from ADP, Business Objects, CACI International, Ericsson, Lexmark, MicroStrategy, NCR, NTT DoCoMo, SAP, Unisys and Yahoo.
* Quarterly losses from Flextronics, Imation, NEC and VeriSign.

* A possible joint venture deal between Sprint Nextel, the third-largest US operator, and Clearwire, the US pioneer of 4G wireless broadband networks.
* A possible split-off by Motorola of its loss-making handset division.

* JSE All share index: Up 8.5%
* Nasdaq: Up 3.7%
* Top SA share movements: Beget Holdings (+25%), Cape Empowerment Trust (+19%), Faritec (+12.9%), Ifca Technologies (-20%), Infowave (-17.5%), Labat Africa (+16.7%), Pinnacle (-11.6%), Spescom (-13%) and Stella Vista (-25%)

Fortune magazine has just published its 2008 '100 best companies to work for' list, with Google remaining at number one. Other technology entries are Cisco at number six (was 11), SAS Institute at 29 (was 44), Adobe at 40 (was 31), Microsoft at 86 (was 50) and Yahoo at 87 (was 44).