Accenture keeps on spending

Accenture's two acquisitions, a good IPO and several more acquisitions - including by Alibaba and Amazon - dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, it was very quiet.

* Very good interim numbers from Cognition Holdings, with revenue up 27.1% and profit up 47.5%.
* Jasco Electronics acquired Cross Fire Management, a specialist in the design, supply, fabrication, installation, servicing and maintenance of a range of fire protection systems for various industries and protected risk specifications. The deal was worth R53.2 million (65.4%).
* The appointment of Deon Tromp as CEO of Trustlink.
* The departure of Christo Davel, founder and CEO of local personal financial management start-up, 22seven.

* The appointment of Roma Smith as Riverbed's regional director for Sub-Saharan Africa.

Jeff Jones has resigned as president of Uber.

* Accenture acquired First Annapolis Consulting, a payments consulting and advisory firm; and Focus Group Europe, a UK-based ServiceNow consulting services provider.
* Alibaba Group Holding bought online ticketing platform Damai.cn.
* Altice purchased Teads, the world's number one video advertising marketplace.
* Amazon acquired souq.com, an e-commerce shopping site.
* Apple bought Workflow, a popular mobile app for automating tasks.
* Infor purchased Ciber's Infor Practice.
* The Indian operations of Vodafone Group and Idea Cellular joined forces, in a $23 billion merger creating the country's biggest telecoms business.
* Panasonic made an additional 20% investment in Spanish auto parts maker Ficosa International SA, which has strengths in electronic automotive mirrors and other advanced safety systems, as it bolsters its push into the automotive field and raises its overall stake to 69%.
* Softbank made a $300 million investment in WeWork, a shared office space start-up.
* Warburg Pincus made a $300 million (35%) investment in Avaloq, Switzerland's largest software provider to banks.
* Invensas, a subsidiary of Xperi, has prevailed in two German patent infringement actions against Broadcom and certain of its subsidiaries and distributors.
* Space Systems/Loral is suing rival Orbital ATK over an alleged theft of proprietary data and business plans for an in-space satellite servicing technology.
* Bharti Airtel will transfer a 21.63% stake in mobile tower arm Bharti Infratel to wholly-owned subsidiary Nettle Infrastructure Investments, thus still retaining a 50.33% stake.
* Excellent quarterly results from Micron Technology (back in the black).
* Very good quarterly figures from Asure Software (back in the black).
* Very good year-end figures from Tencent Holdings.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from China Mobile.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Accenture, with revenue up but profit down; and Avid Technology, with revenue down but back in the black.
* Mixed year-end figures from China Telecom, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Envestnet, Imation, Shenandoah Telecom, Spark Networks, Upland Software and ZTE.
* A full-year loss from Cheetah Mobile (China).
* The appointment of Rick Tsai as co-CEO of MediaTek.
* Jeff Jones has resigned as president of Uber.
* An IPO filing for the South Korean Stock Exchange from Netmarble Games, South Korea's largest mobile game company.
* A good IPO on the NYSE by Alteryx, a provider of self-service data analytics software.

EMEA/Africa:
* EMEA purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) vendor revenue declined 6% year-on-year to reach $254 million in Q416, according to IDC. Capacity shipped for 4Q16 totalled 317PB, an increase of 19% from 4Q15. The growth mainly came from open systems products, with capacity increasing 25% year-on-year.
* The PC market for East Africa, comprising Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda, declined by 8.6% year-on-year in Q416, according to IDC.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide corporate IT spending funded by non-IT business units will reach $609 billion in 2017, an increase of 5.9% over 2016, according to IDC.
* The worldwide converged systems market revenue decreased 1.4% year-on-year to $3.09 billion during Q416, according to IDC. The market consumed 1.6 exabytes of new storage capacity during the quarter, which was up a moderate 4% compared to the same period a year ago. For the full year 2016, worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 5.8% to $11.3 billion when compared to 2015.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.4%
* FTSE100: Down 1.2%
* DAX: Down 0.3%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 1.5%
* S&P 500: Down 1.4%
* Nasdaq: Down 1.2%
* Nikkei225: Down 1.3%
* Hang Seng: Up 0.2%
* Shanghai: Up 1%

International:
* Further acquisitions from Accenture - there have been 10 so far this year.

South Africa:
* Further news regarding Cell C and its future.

Fortune magazine has published its 2017 'most admired companies' list. Included in the '50 All-Stars' list are:
* 1: Apple
* 2: Amazon
* 6: Alphabet
* 9: Facebook tied with Microsoft for the ninth spot
* 14: Netflix
* 20: Salesforce.com
* 24: IBM
* 37: AT&T
* 41: Accenture
* 46: Intel