This month in previous years. In September 2007 an investment group bought 3Com for $2.2B and T-Mobile expanded its US marketshare, paying $2.4 Billion for SunCom Wireless Holdings.  The busiest acquirer that month however was Yahoo with three acquisitions Zimbra ($350 Million), BlueLithium ($300 Million) and Participate Media (undisclosed). In September 2008 the collapse of investment banks and the potential bailout by the US Government filled the headlines.  There was M&A activity but not on a grand scale. McAfee paid $465 Million for Secure Computing and Microsoft paid $485 million for Greenfield Online. A shopping comparison site.  Perhaps the most interesting purchase was by Best Buy, who paid $120million for Napster.  Things picked up in September 2009 with Dell paying $3.9 Billion for Perot Systems and Xerox buying ACS for $6.4 Billion.  Ebay sold its majority holding in Skype to a group of investors for $1.9 Billion and Adobe shelled out $1.8 billion for web analytics company Omniture, in addition to buying Business Catalyst.  Nortel sold its Enterprise Solutions unit to Avaya for $915 Million; EMC added a couple of acquisitions, Kazeon Systems and Fastscale technology; Raytheon picked up internet pioneer BBN and CA shelled out $200 million for NetQoS. A year ago in September 2010 HP bought 3PAR for $2.4 Billion and they also paid $1.5 Billion for Arcsight.  HP was also in a spat with Oracle over former CEO Mark Hurd’s non-compete and announced the hiring of Leo Aptheker (more on him in a minute). In other acquisition news 3M paid close to $1 Billion for Cogent, RIM bought a substantial part of DataViz, Ericsson beat out a local Ottawa based group in an auction for another piece of the defunct Nortel empire, CA bought Hyperformix; AOL bought TechCrunch and locally to Ottawa Alex Beraskow’s IT/Net was snapped up by KPMG.

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.

HP was in the news again, and none of it was good.  They announced layoffs from their PC, tablet and Palm divisions . and rumours emerged that Amazon might be interested in Palm.  HP also fired CEO Leo Apotheker after less than a year (with a sweetheart severance package), in fact it was this month last year that they announced his arrival. The incoming CEO is former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, which has created an industry buzz wondering if she is the right person for the job.  I expect time will tell, but HP can’t afford too many more mis-steps!

There was more drama with the email firing of high profile CEO Carol Bartz, by the Yahoo board and the subsequent public dialogue.  Nokia announced significantly more layoffs as the once high-flyer continues to struggle.  Finally New York State announced a nice investment by 5 tech firms in creating and protecting 6,900 jobs . with no state handouts

Read more Industry News…

The staffing world tends to slow down during July and August due to vacations, and the difficulty of getting decision makers to make a timely decision! September, however, is usually a busier month as those managers play catch-up on their staffing needs.  That trend can be seen in the Statistics Canada numbers showing that Canada added 61,000 jobs in September and the unemployment rate improved by 0.2% to 7.1%, which is the lowest rate since December 2008. 

At time of writing, the Canadian Dollar was basically unchanged from last month and is still above par at just over $1.01 US, and the markets continue to fluctuate wildly.  The world struggles with numerous issues, the latest being the various “Occupy” protests started in Wall Street, but now global.  Europe is contemplating another bailout to deal with sovereign debt issues, particularly with the PIIGS.  The uncertainty continues to erode confidence in corporations around the world, in addition to the stock markets that provide them with their valuations.  Once again, the TSX, here in Canada is down, this time about 280 points to 11,849.  As if all of this were not enough, the oil patch continues to deal with environmental issues and the price per barrel is down slightly to $86.16 US. 

Here at Eagle, we continue to see some growth, however, we did not see a spike in orders in September, which remained at the July and August levels.  Our clients are still cautious but there is a steady demand for talent in the hotter markets.

Read the complete IT Job Market Update

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