On the back burner

BearingPoint is the latest international company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. At home, Faritec has called off its acquisition plans, and MTN has delayed its BEE deal.

* Very good interim numbers from Simeka, with revenue up 27% and profit up 33%.
* A positive trading update from MTN.
* Negative trading updates from Ifca Technologies, Mustek and Pinnacle Holdings.
* Vodacom made an additional investment in Zoopy, a social media company, raising its stake from 40% to 75%.
* Faritec has called off its intended acquisition of Ubushu Technologies.
* MTN has put its BEE deal on hold until the economic climate improves.
* Teraco Data Environments has opened its Cape Town data centre.

* ContinuitySA has opened offices in Mauritius and Mozambique, with the former via a partnership with Mauritius Telecom and IT company, Blanche Birger.
* Artel, the telecommunications regulatory authority in Gabon, has awarded the country's fourth mobile licence to Bintel, a Dubai-based company.

Venture capital investors have made a $35 million investment in Twitter, an Internet service that enables users to spontaneously post brief messages online.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* ABS Capital partners, an investment company, acquired MicroStrategy subsidiary, Alarm.com, a provider of Web-enabled residential and commercial security and activity monitoring technology.
* Novell purchased Fortefi, a provider of compliance and privileged user management solutions.
* Radware, an integrated application delivery solutions provider, bought certain assets of Nortel Networks' Layer 4-7 Application Delivery business. This seems to be the first part of Nortel Networks' potential sell-off/break-up since it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
* Toshiba acquired Fujitsu's hard disk business.
* Venture capital investors have made a $35 million investment in Twitter, an Internet service that enables users to spontaneously post brief messages online.
* BearingPoint has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. BearingPoint is one of the world's leading IT and management consultants, employing over 15 000 people in 60 countries, and last year had revenue of over $2.3 billion. It was formed from KPMG Consulting in 2001.
* Ericsson and STMicroelectronics have formed a joint venture to develop products for mobile platforms.
* Golden Gate Capital has sold off its remaining stake in UK-based software company, Micro Focus, for £250 million. The former, together with Parallax Capital Partners, bought Micro Focus out of Merant in 2001 for just £45 million, floated it on the LSE in May 2005, and progressively reduced its shareholding in the company over time. This is a textbook case of what private equity groups should be doing regarding the turnaround of struggling companies. Today, Micro Focus has a market capitalisation of over £500 million and is part of the FTSE250 index.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Portugal Telecom, with profit up over 100%.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Comcast, Oman Telecommunications (profit down 67%) and Trend Micro.
* Mixed half-year figures from Capgemini (revenue marginally up, but profit down 19%), Colt Telecom (revenue up, but profit down) and HP (revenue up, but profit down).
* Quarterly losses from Brocade (although revenue up over 25%) Ingram Micro (revenue also down), Rogers Communications (although revenue up) and Sprint Nextel (revenue also down, but loss very small compared to previous year).
* Mark Lucas was appointed president and COO of Imation.

* The EMEA multifunctional printer market declined 8.4% in 2008, reports Gartner.
* The global netbook market is expected to grow to between 25 million and 30 million units in 2009, from 14 million units in 2008, according to Acer.

* JSE All share index: Down 6% (lowest weekend closing in 2009)
* Nasdaq: Down 6.1% (lowest weekend closing in 2009)
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (-20.4%), Beget Holdings (-33.3%), ConvergeNet (+20%), Faritec (-25%), GijimaAst (-16.7%), Jasco (-15.7%), Labat Africa (-66.7%), Paracon (-14.3%), Reunert (-14.3%) and Zaptronix (+33.3%)

Fortune magazine has published its 2009 '100 Best Companies to work for' list. From a technology perspective, NetApp came in at number one, followed by Google at number four, Cisco at six and Adobe Systems at 11. Microsoft was down at 38 and Accenture at 97. No mention is made of Dell, HP, IBM, Oracle or any of the telecommunications companies.