IT Industry News
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All of which brings us to February 2010. February has not been a busy month for M&A activity in a couple of years now, and this year is no exception. Close to home was Manpower’s acquisition of Comsys which will see their US professional staffing capability notably improved, and may have some spillover into Canada. Google continued its moves into social networking with the acquisition of Aardvark in addition to its BUZZ offering. Oracle purchased a couple of smaller entities, now that its big Sun purchase is all done. IBM bought a small network software company that focuses on the telco vertical and Sybase bought a company that has a strong foothold in the financial services vertical. More…
So . here we are in January Twenty-Ten and there is cautious optimism in the air, but not much in the way of blockbuster M&A deals! There were several positive indicators in January particularly in the US . US GDP grew at an annual rate of 5.7% in the latest quarter; the ECRI weekly measure of the US economy reached an 18 month high; the number of lost jobs was the smallest decline since March 2008; and, CEO confidence was up. Forrester are bullish on tech spending expecting strong growth in 2010. Here in Canada unemployment was pretty steady at 8.5% although 2,600 jobs were lost in December. Having said that, Eagle’s experience has been a steady increase in activity of the last few months and January was one of our busiest months in a long time! More…
So what is happening in December 2009? To be honest, if we leave out stories about famous golfers, then not very much! Of course Globalive might disagree, as their ability to operate in the wireless business in Canada was enabled by Industry Canada, after an initial negative reaction from the CRTC. The Wind Mobile brand is now competing with the more established suppliers. More…
In November 2009 there is still a “hangover” from the recession, but the general mood is more optimistic, with most pundits looking towards a slow recovery in the first and second quarter next year. The US and Canadian employment figures were not good but economists predict a growth in US GDP, and Europe seems to be on a path to recovery. The law caught up with a couple of nasty “spammers” and October marked an unofficial 40th birthday for the internet (wish I was 40!). Adobe (680), Microsoft (800), and Rogers (900) all announced layoffs this month . and Right Management tell us that as many as 80% of employees may look to change job as the economy recovers! The CRTC turned down GlobalLive from becoming a potential wireless carrier for Canada and Intel “played nice” with arch-rival AMD. More…
That brings us to October 2009 and the news continues to be mixed. Cisco went on a spending spree this month, paying $3 Billion for Tandberg, $2.9 Billion for Starent and $183 Million for ScanSafe. Also this month Adecco paid about $1.1 Billion for MPS Group (includes Beeline); Emerson Electric beefed up its datacenter capability paying $1.2 Billion for Avocent and Sprint Nextel avoided some legal issues by shelling out $831 million for iPCS. Perot Systems, who themselves were bought by Dell last month, announced that they picked up Bearing Point’s Chinese operations, and there were a few other deals that included interesting companies such as Siemens AG, Oracle, AT&T, MTS Allstream and Tibco. More…
That brings us to September 2009 and while there were some interesting developments in the M&A world, there were not a lot of studies released. So maybe people are just getting fed up with the constant debate about the economy! Not everyone though, the OECD released a report suggesting that Canada is lagging other major economies in recovering from the recession, which is counter to what most Canadian economists have been saying. Certainly Canada has fared much better than the US, and signs continue to be positive but most of us are very cautious with our optimism! The latest word from the experts is that its time to spend. It will be consumer and business spending that will restore confidence in our economy!!! More…
