Flipkart snaps up Snapdeal

The acquisitions involving Flipkart, Sage Group UK and United Internet were the main stories of a busy week in the international ICT market.

At home, a new Gupta scandal, this time involving Software AG, dominated the local ICT media space.

* A full-year loss from Ellies Holdings, with revenue down 2.3%.
* A positive trading update from MTN Group.
* African Rainbow Capital made a 20% investment in fixed and mobile data network operator Rain.
* Convergence Partners has now sold its 25% shareholding in Dimension Data to NTT, and in addition, Andile Ngcaba has stepped down from the various group boards on which he served, including the executive chairmanship of Dimension Data. Dimension Data will announce a new B-BBEE deal in October.
* Software AG has launched an internal review following reports that its SA operation is alleged to have paid kickbacks in the form of sales commissions to Gupta-linked companies and individuals.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by M-FiTec.
* The appointment of Jonathan Knoll as Entersekt's country manager for Central Europe.

* Satisfactory quarterly figures from Airtel Africa, with revenue up 1.5% but back in the black; and Orange's Africa operations.
* Mediocre quarterly figures from Millicom's operations in Africa.

BMC Software has ended its merger talks with CA Technologies.

* Atos's subsidiary Worldline acquired First Data's fully owned subsidiaries in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for EUR73 million.
* Drei Austria, a mobile telecoms group, bought landline-focused Tele2 for EUR95 million.
* Facebook purchased Source3, a content rights management start-up.
* Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce company, acquired Snapdeal, the Indian online marketplace, for $950 million.
* Mitel bought rival ShoreTel for $430 million, in a move that creates a unified communications powerhouse.
* Motorola Solutions purchased Plant Holdings, which holds the Airbus DS Communications business.
* MTS acquired regional Russian MNO Bashkortostan Cellular Communication for $5 million, in a move designed to boost its spectrum holdings in the Urals region of that country.
* Nasdaq bought Sybenetix, a London-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to help compliance officers at asset management firms analyse the behaviour of their traders in order to prevent market abuse.
* IT services provider Persistent Systems (India) purchased Swiss firm Parx Werk, a Salesforce Platinum partner, for $16 million.
* Sage Group (UK) acquired Intacct, a US and cloud-based financial software firm, for $850 million.
* Australian telecoms carrier Speedcast bought US-based remote communications company UltiSat for $100 million, in a move designed to boost its own remote communications and professional services to the government sector.
* United Internet purchased Drillisch, a German Budget mobile operator, for more than EUR8 billion.
* Verisk Analytics acquired G2 Web Services, a provider of merchant risk intelligence solutions for acquirers, commercial banks and other payment system providers.
* Didi Chuxing, the company that defeated Uber in China, and SoftBank, made a $2 billion investment in Grab, the ride-hailing company competing with Uber in Southeast Asia.
* A Softbank-led group made a $250 million investment in Slack Technologies.
* Tencent Holdings made a £17.7 million (9%) investment in the UK's only listed video game developer, Frontier Developments.
* Tencent Holdings also made a $400 million investment in Ola, the Indian Uber competitor.
* Motorola Solutions has filed new patent infringement complaints with the Regional Court of Mannheim, in Germany, against Hytera Communications of Shenzhen, China and Hytera Mobilfunk of Bad M"under, Germany.
* A US judge has ordered Apple to pay $506 million for infringing on a patent owned by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's patent licensing arm, more than doubling the damages initially imposed on Apple by a jury.
* Apple paid $2 billion to settle a patent infringement lawsuit with European tech giant Nokia, which accused Apple of using 32 of its patents for iPhones, iPads and other devices.
* BMC Software has ended its merger talks with CA Technologies.
* Line Corporation is to establish a new subsidiary, Line Friends Japan, to succeed the company's Line Friends Store business.
* The government IT services division that spun off from Harris, acquired by Veritas Capital in a $690 million deal in April, will henceforth be known as Peraton.
* Excellent quarterly results from BE Semiconductor Industries, Facebook and SK Hynix.
* Very good quarterly figures from Align Technology, DST Systems, Entegris, Innolux (back in the black), InterDigital, Teradyne (back in the black) and Western Digital (back in the black).
* Good quarterly numbers from American Tower, Asia Tech Image, ATN (back in the black), AXT, Baidu, Canon, Cohu, Comcast, EA, Flir Systems, Fortinet, Integrated Service Technology, Intel, Monolithic Power Systems, PayPal, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, Turk Telecom, Tyler Technologies and Yandex.
* Good half-year numbers from Atos, Huawei and Line Corporation.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Amphenol, Anixter International, ASE, AU Optronics (back in the black), AudioCodes, AVX, Bharti Airtel, Cabot Microelectronics, Cadence Design Systems, Corning, CRA, Dassault Systemes, Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (du), Equifax, F5 Networks, Flex, Interface, Iron Mountain (back in the black), Juniper Networks, Kyocera, L-3 Technologies, Lam Research, LG Display, LG Electronics, Logitech International, Nintendo (back in the black), Orange, PC Connection, Philips, Plantronics, Sanmina, Sensata Technologies, Sharp (back in the black), Silicon Labs, SS&C Technologies, STC, Telefonica, Telefonica Brasil, Total Systems Services, VeriSign, Verizon Communications, Visteon and Xilinx.
* Satisfactory half-year figures from Capgemini and Etisalat UAE.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Chunghwa Telecom, CTG, CyberOptics, Digital International, Etisalat, Kinsus Interconnect Technology, MicroStrategy, PDF Solutions, Siliconware Precision and Vasco Data Security.
* Mediocre half-year numbers from Batelco.
* Mixed quarterly figures from ADP, with revenue up but profit down; Akamai, with revenue up but profit down; Alphabet, with revenue up but profit down; Amazon, with revenue up but profit down; AT&T, with revenue down but profit up; BT Group, with revenue up but profit down; Celestica, with revenue up but profit down; Charter Communications, with revenue up but profit down; Conmed, with revenue up but profit down; CoreLogic, with revenue down but profit up; Entercom Communications, with revenue up but profit down; Euronet, with revenue up but profit down; Forrester Research, with revenue up but profit down; Iridium Communications, with revenue up but profit down; KLA-Tencor, with revenue up but profit down; KPN, with revenue down but profit up; Microsemi, with revenue up but profit down; Mitek, with revenue up but profit down; Netgear, with revenue up but profit down; NTT DoCoMo, with revenue up but profit down; Rambus, with revenue up but profit down; Seagate, with revenue down but profit up; Tata Communications, with revenue up but profit down; TE Connectivity, with revenue up but profit down; Telesat, with revenue down but profit up; Tower International, with revenue down but back in the black; and UMC, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from 8x8, A10 Networks, AMD, Atlassian, Altice USA, Commvault Systems, Cray, Cypress Semiconductor, Digimarc, Imperva, Intelsat, Kratos, Limelight Networks, Mellanox, Millicom, Mitel, MobileIron, MuleSoft, NetScout Systems, Nokia, Proofpoint, ServiceNow, Shutterfly, Sophos, Teradata, Twitter, Vocera Communications, Weatherford, Wix and Xperi.
* The appointments of Chip Bergh as chairman of HP; Ursula Burns as chairman of Veon; Amos Genish as MD of Telecom Italia; Steve Luczo as chairman of Seagate Technology (as of October; was CEO); and Dave Mosely as CEO of Seagate Technology (as of October).
* The resignation of Meg Whitman, chairman of HP.
* The departure of Flavio Cattaneo, CEO of Telecom Italia.
* A satisfactory IPO on the Six Swiss Exchange by Landis+Gyr, Toshiba's smart meter maker unit.

* Worldwide:
* The growth of digital business and the Internet of things is expected to drive large investment in IT operations management (ITOM) through 2020, according to Gartner. A primary driver for organisations moving to ITOM open source software is its lower cost of ownership.
* Total IT spending by small and medium-sized businesses will approach $568 billion in 2017 and increase by more than $100 billion to exceed $676 billion in 2021, according to IDC. With a CAGR of 4.5%, spending by businesses with less than 1 000 employees on IT hardware, software and services, including business services, is expected to be slightly stronger than its previous forecast.
* The market for governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software is expected to experience strong growth as business leaders look for solutions to meet the challenges of regulatory change, cyber security threats, third-party exposure, and reputation risk, says IDC. In the first forecast to size the overall GRC software market, it sees worldwide revenue reaching $11.8 billion in 2021, growing at a compound annual rate of 6.7% over the 2016-2021 forecast period.
* Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) solutions have only been commercially available for a few years, but the technology's ability to address pressing enterprise networking needs has led to remarkable growth, according to IDC. A new forecast estimates worldwide SD-WAN infrastructure and services revenue will see a CAGR of 69.6% and reach $8.05 billion in 2021.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.3% (highest weekend close since April 2015)
* FTSE100: Down 1.1%
* DAX: Down 0.6%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.2%
* S&P 500: Down 0.1%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.2%
* Nikkei225: Down 0.7%
* Hang Seng: Up 1% highest weekend close this year)
* Shanghai: Up 0.5%

International:
* Blackstone Group acquiring 40% of Israeli cyber firm NSO Group for $400 million.
* Further developments regarding the Apple/Qualcomm squabble over patents.
* The outcome as buyout funds Hellman & Friedman and Vista Equity Partners have made rival bids for German business software maker TeamViewer in a deal worth more than $2 billion.

South Africa:
* Blue Label completing the Cell C restructuring deal.

PwC recently published its 31 March 2017 update on the 'Global Top 100 Companies' by market capitalisation. In this report, it highlighted the major trends of these companies as they emerged from the global financial crisis.

Included in this list, with their 2009 rankings in brackets, are:
* 1: Apple (was 33)
* 2: Alphabet (was 22)
* 3: Microsoft (was 6)
* 4: Amazon (n/a)
* 6: Facebook (new entry since 2009)
* 11: Tencent Holdings (new entry since 2009)
* 12: Alibaba (new entry since 2009)
* 14: Samsung (was 53)
* 15: AT&T (was 7)
* 20: China Mobile (was 5)
* 30: Verizon Communications (was 39)
* 32: Oracle (was 37)
* 35: Comcast (n/a)
* 40: Intel (was 40)
* 41: Cisco (was 30)
* 43: IBM (was 14)
* 45: TSMC (new entry since 2009)
* 56: SAP (was 89)
* 73: Charter Communications (new entry since 2009)
* 88: NTT DoCoMo (was 58)
* 95: NTT (was 59)
* 98: Broadcom (new entry since 2009)

The following should be noted:
* The market capitalisation is more than double the post-crisis levels and 12% up on 2016.
* Technology is the largest sector represented.
* Apple retains top position for the sixth year.
* Broadcom and Charter Communications were new entries this year.
* Deutsche Telekom, Qualcomm and Vodafone have dropped out of the Top 100.
* There were no IPO direct entries this year.