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IT Industry News
August 2015 was an exceptionally slow month in the M&A space; however, there were two billion dollar deals. Symantec sold Veritas (which it paid $13.5 billion dollars for 10 years ago) to a group of investors for $8 billion. IBM also paid "big bucks", shelling out $1 billion for Merge Healthcare. A small deal saw Calgary-based Above Security bought by Hitachi; Transcomos bought 30% of Vietnamese daily deals site Hotdeal; Freshdesk bought live-chat company 1Click; and PLDT bought ecommerce startup Paywhere.
Other companies in the news were HTC for laying off 2,250 people and Lenovo who laid off 3,200 people. Both companies have been struggling in the hyper-competitive smartphone space.
On the economic front, there is much debate about Canada’s latest "recession" following reports of two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Certainly the West is suffering because of the price of oil; however, Canada is still adding jobs and consumers are spending. There is no panic, but it certainly isn’t the US, which seems to be going from strength to strength. Almost every indicator there was positive again in July, and another 185,000 jobs added!
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