Shopping sprees

The past two weeks in the ICT industry have been dominated by a flood of acquisitions. On the international front, SAP acquired Business Objects; and the bid by Oracle for BEA Systems is starting to make big waves. At home, Datatec`s activity seems to have stolen the headline space.

* Very good interim numbers from Altron, with revenue up over 30% and profit up 18%; and Jasco, with revenue up over 40% and profit up nearly 40%.
* Good interim figures from Datacentrix, with revenue up nearly 15% but profit up over 50%.
* Satisfactory interim numbers from BTG and Infowave.
* Mediocre interim numbers from ISA Holdings.
* Mediocre year-end figures from SecureData Holdings.
* Positive trading updates from Paracon and Vox Telecom (ex-DataPro).
* A mixed trading update from Eureka.
* Datatec`s Logicalis division acquired a further 50% stake in Intact Germany, thus raising its shareholding to 75%.
* Datatec`s Logicalis division purchased a further 20.04% interest in Logicalis South America, for $6.2 million. This stake brings its shareholding to 100%.
* Datatec`s Weston subsidiary bought Cernet of America and its related Mexican company for $4.65 million.
* Naspers acquired Polish instant messaging company, Gadu Gadu, thus adding another foreign footprint to its multimedia stable.
* Paracon bought X-PERT Group, a project management consulting and training company.
* Vox Telecom, through its subsidiary, @lantic Internet Services, purchased the customer contracts and certain hardware assets of Absa`s Internet Access services.
* Vox Telecom acquired Storm Telecom for R360 million.
* Conexus Investment Fund, a private equity company, made a 20% investment in Magix Integration, a technology-assisted risk management company.
* MSG Consortium, a BEE group, invested R113 million (25.1%) in Dialogue Group. The MSG Consortium consists of MSG Africa and Tlhalefang Investments, previous minority shareholders in Dialogue.
* Spescom disposed of its investment in USA-based Enterprise Informatics (ex Spescom Software) for $2.5 million.
* Llewellyn Jones was appointed CEO of SITA.
* Sipho Zungu was appointed CEO for Calling the Cape, a company heavily involved in the call centre industry.
* Noedine Isaacs-Mpulo, COO of SITA, resigned.
* Channel Data was appointed the South African distributor for the PC data protection and storage services of US-based Iron Mountain, a company that a few months ago was looking to acquire Metrofile. Iron Mountain has also just acquired RMS Services, a records management company and provider of outsourced file room solutions for hospitals.
* Taropa was appointed a distributor for Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe.
* Tarsus Technologies was appointed a distributor for Logitech.

* Egypt`s Orascom Telecom announced it will bid for that country`s second fixed-line phone licence planned for 2008.
* Nigeria`s Visaphone Communications (was Cellcom) bought International Phone Networks ITN.
* Lonrho made an additional investment in Zimbabwe`s Celsys, through its purchase of Blueberry International, thus giving it control of the company.
* Telecom Namibia became the first service provider in Emerging Africa to achieve membership of the Cisco Powered Program that recognises the delivery of quality networking services.
* Six companies have been short-listed for a 51% stake in government-owned Ghana Telecom. They include France Telecom, Portugal Telecom and Telkom SA.

Look out for the outcome of the $6.7 billion bid by Oracle for BEA Systems.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Accenture acquired Corliant, a technology consulting company that specialises in helping enterprises and communication service providers deploy and support IP networks, and HB Maynard, a provider of workforce improvement products and services.
* Adobe bought Virtual Ubiquity, the developer of Buzzword, an online word processor.
* AT&T purchased Interwise, a conferencing services provider, for $121 million.
* BMC Software purchased Emprisa Networks, a provider of smart network compliance, change and configuration management and automation solutions.
* BT Group acquired Lynx Technology, an IT services provider, for £22 million. It also bought French consulting company, Net2S, for EUR68.5 million. These are the fourth and fifth IT services/consulting acquisitions by the BT Group in the past few months, having swallowed up Basilica Computing (UK), i2i Enterprise (India) and INS Group (Belgium). In its most recent fiscal year, BT`s Global Services division increased sales to over $15 billion.
* eBay purchased ViA-Online GmbH, the owner of Afterbuy.com, an auction management software company.
* EMC purchased Berkeley Data Systems, a provider of online information backup and recovery services.
* Fujitsu Services acquired Swedish IT services company, Mandator, for $80 million. This move follows Fujitsu`s failed bid for French systems integrator, GFI Informatique.
* Gateway purchased Packard Bell, a precursor to the take-over of the former by Acer.
* Google bought Jaiku, a Finnish start-up that developed a mobile phone application, which people can use to send short messages regarding where they are and what they are doing.
* Microsoft acquired Jellyfish.com, a comparative shopping site.
* Nokia purchased NAVTEQ for $8.1 billion. NAVTEQ is a provider of digital map information for automotive navigational systems, mobile navigation devices, Internet-based mapping applications, and government and business solutions. NAVTEQ also owns Traffic.com, a Web and interactive service that provides traffic information and content to consumers.
* Oracle bought LogicalApps, a provider of automated governance, risk and compliance controls management solutions.
* SAP acquired Business Objects SA for EUR4.8 billion.
* Vodafone bought the Italian and Spanish assets of Tele2 AB for £537 million. Tele2 offers fixed-line and broadband telephone services in those countries.
* Wipro Technologies, one of India`s leading IT services companies, bought the wireless design subsidiary of OKI Electric Industry, which provides RF and baseband design services to the Japanese product engineering market.
* Yahoo made a 10% investment in Alibaba, China`s largest e-commerce company.
* Microsoft announced it will spin-off the group behind its Halo video game series, Bungie Studios, but retain a stake in the company.
* NCR announced that the spin-off of Teradata is complete and the latter is now separately-listed on the NYSE.
* Philips announced it has sold a 13% stake in LG Philips LCD for EUR1.55 billion as part of its effort to exit the display industry.
* Siemens announced it is to be divided into three segments: healthcare; automation and infrastructure; and energy.
* A joint venture (Qreative Design) was announced between Sony and Qimonda AG, for the design of high-performance, low power, embedded and customer-specific DRAMS.
* Excellent quarterly results from Research in Motion.
* Very good quarterly figures from LG Philips LCD (back in the black).
* Good quarterly numbers from Infosys Technologies and Lawson Software.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Oc'e, although profit up nearly 100%, and Samsung Electronics.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Sony Ericsson.
* Quarterly losses from Corel, Micron Technology and Palm.
* Reinhard Clemens was appointed the new head of Deutsche Telekom`s T-Systems subsidiary; Andy Green was appointed CEO of LogicaCMG; and Niklas Zennstrom was appointed non-executive chairman of Skype (he was CEO and one of the founders).
* Gary Forsee, chairman and CEO of Sprint Nextel; and Janus Friis, an executive and founder of Skype, resigned.
* A satisfactory IPO by Virgin Mobile USA that raised a little over $400 million.

* The outcome of the $6.7 billion bid by Oracle for BEA Systems.
* The granting of a mobile licence by the Kenyan authorities to Telkom Kenya.
* The new role that Atos Origin will have in the consolidation of the IT services sector, following an investor pact that has been created by its two largest shareholders.

* According to Gartner, energy and floor space constraints will cause significant disruptions to US Enterprise Data Centres during the next three years.
* Global IT spending this year will exceed $3 trillion, 8% up from last year, Gartner predicts.

* JSE All share index: Up 4.2% (An all-time weekend high)
* Nasdaq: Up 3.9% (A six-year high weekend close)
* Top SA share movements: Alliance Data (+16.1%), Altech (+12.7%), Beget Holdings (+16.7%), BTG (+11.5%), Celcom (+12.9%), Cyberhost (+76.2%), MICROmega (+18.5%), Spescom (+15.6%), Stella Vista (+56.3%) and Zaptronix (-16.7%)

My next column will appear on Monday 29 October and will cover a two-week period.