Hutchison Whampoa makes £10.3bn purchase

Lexmark's acquisition of Kofax and the Hutchison Whampoa/O2 deal were the main stories of the international ICT market last week.

At home, the Open Text BEE deal and Red Hat's new sub-Saharan Africa appointment were the local ICT highlights.

* Mixed interim numbers from Cognition Holdings (ex-FoneWorx), with revenue down 1.3% but profit up 18.1%.
* Cognition Holdings acquired (63%) BMi Sport Group, a company that provides research and media monitoring of South African sport and the sport sponsorship market.
* Open Text has completed a BEE investment deal with Kutana Investment Group.
* ConvergeNet Holdings will commence trading under its new name, Stellar Capital Partners, on 2 April.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Telkom SA.
* The appointments of Mark Geschke as MD of Relevant IT; and Ruhan Neethling as MD of Space Age Technologies.
* The resignations of Mark Bannerman as MicroStrategy's country manager for SA; and Mark Geschke, MD of Space Age Technologies.

* Global Distribution FZE has opened an East African subsidiary, based in Kampala, Uganda.
* The appointment of Mark Bannerman as Red Hat's manager for sub-Saharan Africa.

Open Text has completed a BEE investment deal with Kutana Investment Group.

* Apple acquired FoundationDB, a specialist in NoSQL databases.
* Cellnex Telecom bought the majority of Wind's telecom towers business (Italy) for EUR693 million.
* Hutchison Whampoa purchased Telefonica's UK mobile operator, O2, for £10.3 billion, in a move that will see the latter merged with Three, the former's existing British carrier.
* J2 Global acquired the online file backup, synchronisation and sharing assets of SugarSync.
* Lexmark bought Kofax for $1 billion, in a move designed to bolster the former's software services.
* Microsoft purchased LiveLoop, a start-up that developed a service to let people collaborate on PowerPoint documents.
* NCC, a UK security firm, acquired rival Accumuli for £55 million, in a deal expected to boost the former's capabilities in round-the-clock operational support and incident management.
* Optimal Payments bought rival Skrill for EUR1.1 billion, in a move that will propel the combined online payments business into the FTSE250.
* Twitter Ventures, Twitter's venture capital arm, made its first investment in Cyanogen, a company looking to compete with Google's Android operating system.
* HP and Bank & Olufsen, the Danish audio technology company, formed a strategic partnership.
* Maxim Integrated Products has filed several lawsuits against several banks alleging their smartphone banking apps infringed the company's patents.
* A US jury said Motorola infringed one of Intellectual Ventures' patents on multimedia text messaging.
* Excellent quarterly results from Supercell.
* Very good quarterly figures from Inovalon Holdings.
* Very good year-end numbers from United Internet (Germany).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Accenture, Asure Software (back in the black) and Red Hat.
* Satisfactory year-end numbers from ZTE (although profit up over 90%).
* Mediocre quarterly results from BlackBerry (but back in the black).
* Mediocre year-end numbers from GameStop.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Verint Systems, with revenue up but profit down.
* The appointments of Alek Krstajic as CEO of Wind Mobile; Rob MacLellan as chairman of Wind Mobile; and Kaan Terzioglu as CEO of Turkcell.
* The resignations of Erez Antebi, CEO of Gilat Satellite Networks; Peter Cordova, interim CEO of Wind Mobile; Anthony Lacavera, chairman of Wind Mobile; and Alastair Lukies, founder and co-CEO of Monitise, leaving Elizabeth Buse as the sole CEO of the company.
* A planned IPO on London's AIM market by Myanmar's social media platform, MySQUAR.
* A planned IPO in India by AGS Transact Technologies, a company partially backed by TPG Capital.

EMEA/Africa:
* The EMEA security appliance market reached $3.38 billion in 2014, a moderate 2.9% year-on-year growth, according to IDC. Shipments increased by 3.5% year-on-year to 732 324 units. During the next three years, the security appliance market is expected to accelerate by about 6% to 7% year-on-year and reach $4.07 billion (857 714 units) by the end of 2017.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide integrated infrastructure and platforms revenue increased 19.4% in Q4 2014, as demand outpaced traditional systems, according to IDC.
* The global thin and terminal client market declined 12.5% in Q4 2014, with Dell replacing HP in the number one slot, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.7%
* Nasdaq: Down 2.7%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 2.3%
* S&P 500: Down 2.2%
* FTSE100: Down 2.4%
* Nikkei225: Down 1.4%
* Hang Seng: Up 0.4%
* Shanghai: Up 2% (highest weekend close for five years)
* Top SA share movements: Jasco (-8.6%), Labat Africa (+25%), MTN (-9.7%) and Poynting Holdings (-9.1%)

International:
* The investment by Softbank in India's Micromax Infomatics, a provider of affordable smartphones.
* The purchase by Amazon of Net-a-porter, a luxury online retailer.
* The buyout by Intel of Altera, one of its chip partners.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the local telecommunications industry.

Fortune magazine has published its 2015 100 Best Companies to Work For listing. From a technology perspective, the following were included:
* 1: Google
* 4: SAS Institute
* 8: Salesforce.com
* 21: Ultimate Software
* 22: Workday (new entrant)
* 24: Twitter (new entrant)
* 31: Intuit
* 35: NetApp
* 52: Autodesk
* 65: VMware (new entrant)
* 70: Cisco
* 71: Cadence Design Systems (new entrant)
* 90: Adobe
* 98: Accenture

As next weekend is Easter, my next column will appear on Monday, 13 April, but will fully cover the intervening weeks.