IT Industry News
January 2012 has been an exceptionally quiet M&A month. We have probably been doing the industry news for more than 10 years now and can’t remember a quieter month for acquisitions. We can only speculate that the continuing economic upheavals in Europe and the US have put a damper on corporate confidence. The most recent news, however, does point to more buoyant times so hopefully this is just a blip! It was nice to see former tech giant JDSU back on the acquisition trail, even if just to pick up a small Vancouver-based company, Dyaptive Systems. Symantec paid $115 million for LiveOffice to help with its storage capabilities, Google bought a bunch more IBM patents, and Xerox picked up Laser Networks in the managed printing space.
December 2011 saw some interesting activity, particularly if you follow the Canadian technology landscape. Ottawa’s March Networks was snapped up by Infinova Canada for $90 million, and Toronto based Rypple was acquired by Salesforce.com! the BIG deal was SAP’s $3.4 billion purchase of SuccessFactors, who had also announced they were buying Jobs2Web for $110 milion. It was IBM that was the most active acquirer of the month, paying $440 million for DemandTec, also picking up Emptoris in the procurement world and Irish company Curam Software in the government sector. There was also an interesting investment in Twitter by a Saudi prince that values that company at around the $10 billion mark.
In November 2011 the worlds economies continue to be affected by the sovereign debt issues of the EU and US, and an inability of those governments involved to actually “do what needs to be done”. There is some optimism that these issues will at least receive some relief by year end, which will help; a little!
In October 2011 the world’s economies continue to waver, with the EU now agreeing to another bailout plan for its underperforming members. Employment is still a world problem, but there were some gains in Canada, the US and elsewhere.
September 2011 saw more concern about world economies, unemployment and sovereign debt. Most indicators show a very slow rate of recovery, but it IS mostly heading the right way. We just need to maintain confidence and our governments need to be responsible.
On the M&A front this month the biggest deal saw Broadcom pay $3.7 Billion for NetLogic. Google was busy, buying restaurant reviewer Zagat plus acquiring 1,000 patents from IBM. Ottawa’s Zarlink had been holding out to get a better deal from Microsemi and sold this month for $525 million, (up from the original $450 million). SAP bought Crossgate, Twitter bought Julpan and CSC bought Indian software testing company AppLabs. Last word goes to Hitachi Data Systems who continued the consolidation in the storage industry with the acquisition of BlueArc.
All of which brings us to August 2011 and in addition to Hurricane Irene hitting the US coast, there was a mini-market crash and the world continues to lack confidence in the economy. A look at the various indicators across Canada, the US and the EU would suggest that August was perhaps a tough month on a seemingly never ending journey to recovery. The biggest industry news this month could have been the $12.5 Billion purchase of Motorola Mobility by Google but arguably the announcement that Steve Jobs is stepping down from Apple seemed to get more coverage.
July’s M&A news was relatively low key in the pure tech world and, in company news, both Cisco and RIM announced layoffs. Also this month, Google+ hit the street, as a potential competitor to Facebook and perhaps Twitter. Early days yet, but there is a lot of interest in the tool and its potential when fully integrated with all of the other Google suite of tools. Most recently, news was dominated by the political debate over the US debt ceiling. As well, the EU still has its struggles, but Germany continues to shine while other member countries struggle, Greece for example posted an unemployment rate of 15.8%, as opposed to Canada at 7.4% and the US at 9.2%. Overall, there is a general air of cautious optimism about the future, and once the US can get their recovery plan on track we should see even better times ahead. That will bring different challenges – full employment will mean skills and labour shortages, but that is a better problem than recession!!! More…
Here we are in June 2011 and STILL the world struggles with a “two steps forward, one step back” recovery from the recession. This month saw some negative sentiment from the US CFO community who are feeling a little less optimistic just now. Some of the general economic indicators were either down or static, but need to be taken in context as it is difficult to maintain a constant upward trajectory month after month. The real indicators are comparisons with last year and how far we are from “pre-recession’ levels; and while we can’t be complacent, generally the big picture would suggest we are still heading in the right direction. More…
Which brings us to May 2011 and probably the biggest news is Microsoft’s record breaking offer of $8.5 Billion for Skype. Other M&A activity this month includes Nvidia paying $367M for Icera; Rambus buying Cryptography Research for $342M in the security space; Sandisk acquiring Pliant Technology in the storage world for $327M; and Twitter paying $40M for a Twitter Application, TweetDeck. There were a number of other deals where the finances were not disclosed but “big name” acquirers involved like Deloitte, HP and SoftwareAG. More…
