Mike Lynch loses his autonomy

The numerous $1 billion-plus deals in the pipeline dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, it was comparatively quiet.

• An interim loss from Net1 UEPS Technologies, with revenue down 16.1%.
• A positive trading update from Vodacom.
• Salt Recruitment Group (UK) has part-acquired Recruit Digital (SA) to form Salt South Africa. Salt specialises in digital roles with a specific focus on creative, marketing, sales and technology.
• ICASA announced the spectrum licensing process will begin in April.
• Tellumat is exiting the telecommunications industry following the sale of several Tellumat Integrated Solutions lines of business to CK Solutions.
• The appointment of Andrew Mthembu as chairman of EOH.

• Morocco's state telecoms regulator has fined Maroc Telecom $375 million for anti-competitive practices.
• Vodafone Group will hand over management of its Ghana unit to the UK carrier’s separately listed South African division in April, the latest step to bring the company’s operations on the continent under one roof.
• The appointment of Reem Asaad as Cisco’s VP for its MEA region.

• Cognizant acquired Code Zero, a provider of cloud-based ‘configure-price-quote’ and billing solutions.
• Indonesia-based office supplies distributor Datascrip Solution bought Turbo Mitra Perkasa, which owns e-commerce company turbo.co.id.
• Payment solutions provider Instamojo purchased GetMeShop, a SaaS start-up.
• The private investment arm of Koch Industries, run by billionaire Charles Koch, acquired the remaining 30% of Infor, the cloud-software maker.
• Linx, the leader and specialist in retail software, bought Neemo, the owner of the Delivery App.
• Upland Software purchased Localytics, a provider of mobile app personalisation and analytics solutions.
• VOXX International acquired Vehicle Safety Holding, a developer, manufacturer and distributor of safety electronics.

ICASA announced the spectrum licensing process will begin in April.

• Accenture has agreed to acquire Mudano, a strategic data consultancy to UK financial services firms.
• Atos plans to sell a 13.1% stake in Worldline through a private placement after the payments company agreed to buy its French rival Ingenico.
• AU Optronics (AUO) has offered to acquire 5%-30% shares of Adlink Technology via a tender offer. Through the tender offer, the two parties are looking to form a strategic partnership for building an industrial and commercial AIOT ecosystem.
• Autonomy founder Mike Lynch, who is fighting US charges that he orchestrated a massive fraud at his software firm, was arrested in London as authorities pushed forward with his extradition.
• Bain Capital has agreed to purchase a controlling interest in Engineering, an Italian IT services specialist.
• BlackBerry is highly unlikely to rise from the ashes after its manufacturer, TCL Communication, said it will stop selling BlackBerry-branded mobile devices later this year.
• Cognizant has entered into exclusive negotiations to acquire the French operations of EI-Technologies, a privately held digital technology consulting firm and leading independent Salesforce specialist in France.
• Eaton has agreed to buy Power Distribution, a supplier of mission-critical power distribution, static switching and power monitoring equipment and services for data centres and industrial and commercial customers.
• Elliot Management has taken a $2.5 billion stake in SoftBank.
• EU authorities have sought documents related to Facebook’s alleged efforts to identify and squash potential rivals, deepening an EU preliminary probe into the company.
• ForeScout Technologies has entered into a definitive agreement under which Advent International, one of the largest and most experienced global private equity investors, will acquire all its outstanding shares in a deal valued at $1.9 billion.
• Ireland's Data Protection Commission has launched an inquiry into Alphabet's Google related to the processing of location data.
• Leidos has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire L3Harris Technologies' Security Detection and Automation businesses, for $1 billion.
• LexisNexisRisk Solutions, part of RELX, has entered into an agreement to acquire Emailage, a global provider of fraud prevention and risk management solutions.
• Qualcomm faces a fine of up to $2.4 billion by the EU over claims it used its dominant position to squeeze out rival suppliers to mobile phone companies.
• Spotify Technology has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Ringer, a leading creator of sports, entertainment and pop culture content.
• Unisys is selling its federal contracting arm to SAIC for $1.2 billion.
• Western Digital has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its ActiveScale business to Quantum.
• Worldline SA has agreed to buy rival Ingenico Group SA in a €7.8 billion deal that will create one of the largest payment-services providers.
• Dragoneer Investment Group led a $479 million investment in Snowflake, a data warehousing start-up.
• Huawei Technologies has filed two patent infringement lawsuits against Verizon Communications following an apparent failure to agree to licensing terms for the use of its intellectual property.
  
• Excellent quarterly results from L3Harris Technologies.
• Very good quarterly figures from Cabot Microelectronics and FormFactor.
• Good quarterly numbers from Alphabet, Brooks Automation, DW, Esker, ePlus, Glu Mobile (back in the black), LightPath Technologies, Lumentum, O2 Micro International (back in the black), Paycom Software and Sonos.
• Satisfactory quarterly results from Amdocs, Anixter International, ASE Technologies, Axcelis Technologies, BCE, Cerner, Check Point Software Technologies, CSG Systems International, ESCO Technologies, Gartner, Genpact, IEC Electronics, KLA. Monolithic Power Systems, Nokia, NortonLifeLock, PC Connection, SolarWinds (back in the black), Super Micro Computer, Ubiquiti, Viasat, Viavi Solutions, Vodafone and Zayo Group Holdings.
• Satisfactory nine-month numbers from KDDI.
• Satisfactory year-end figures from RM.
• Mediocre quarterly results from Activision Blizzard, Arrow Electronics, Benchmark Electronics, Coherent, CTS, DXC Technology, Eaton, GrafTech, Infineon Technologies, Key Tronic, MobileIron, NXP Semiconductor, ON Semiconductor, ScanSource, Seagate, Take Two Interactive Software, Tele2 (Sweden), Teradata and Vishay Intertechnology.
• Mediocre nine-month figures from NTT DoCoMo.
• Mixed quarterly figures from CDK Global, Cognizant, eGain, Entegris, Fabrinet, Fiserv, Fortinet, Kimball Electronics, Manhattan Associates, Motorola Solutions, MTS Systems, Qualcomm, Silicon Motion Technology, SiriusXM, Snap-On, Sony, T-Mobile, TTM Technologies, Twitter and VeriSign, with revenue up but net income down; and from Microchip Technology, Nuance Communications, Pitney Bowes, Synaptics and TalkTalk (back in the black), with revenue down but net income up.
• Mixed nine-month figures from Sharp, with revenue down but net income up.
• Quarterly losses from 8x8, Adtran, Akoustis Technologies, Allot, Alpha & Omega Semiconductor, Amtech Systems, AU Optronics, Aviat Networks, Belden, Bharti Airtel, Bill.com, Disney, FireEye, ForeScout Technologies, Giga-tronics, GoPro, Inphi, MaxLinear, Netgear, Pinterest, Pixelworks, Plantronics, Snap, Spotify, Tenable, Twilio, Uber, Viad, Vocera Communications, Westell, Zendesk and Zynga.
• A half-year loss from Filtronic.
• A full-year loss from Toople.
• The appointments of Jed Ayres as CEO of IGEL; Henrik Clausen as CEO of TDC (Denmark); Greg Lock as chairman of Micro Focus; Sandeep Mathrani as CEO of WeWork; and Ian Read as chairman of DVC Technology.
• The resignations of Elchanan Jaglom, chairman of Stratasys; and Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn.
• The departures of Heiko Gloge, the founding father and driving force behind IGEL; Kevin Loosemore, chairman of Micro Focus; and Ryan Roslansky as CEO of LinkedIn.
• The death of Bernard Ebbers, ex-CEO of WorldCom.
• A confidential IPO filing from Asana, a corporate software maker started by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.

Worldwide:

• Global notebook shipments were weaker than expected in Q419 due to Intel's ongoing CPU shortages and major brands stopping to stock extra inventory in the wake of easing US-China trade tensions, according to Digitimes Research. However, annual shipments in 2019 still grew 4.1% on year.
• The global semiconductor industry posted sales of $412.1 billion in 2019, a decrease of 12.1% compared to 2018, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

• JSE All share index: Up 21%
• FTSE100: Up 25%
• DAX: Up 41%
• NYSE (Dow): Up 3%
• S&P 500: Up 32%
• Nasdaq: Up 4% (highest weekend close)
• Nikkei225: Up 27%
• Hang Seng: Up 41%
• Shanghai: Down 34%

International:

• Snowflake filing for an IPO later this year.

South Africa:

• Further developments at Cell C and at EOH.

CRN has just published its list of the 20 Coolest Cloud Security Companies of the 2020 Cloud 100.

Here they are in alphabetical order. Only non-listed companies’ details have been included:

• Aqua Security, which helps address the need to secure microservices applications running on containers and serverless infrastructure. It also recently acquired CloudSploit to help customers monitor their public cloud accounts within minutes and reduce threats due to misconfiguration and vulnerabilities;
• Bitglass, with new SmartEdge network security architecture that will help Bitglass customers circumvent the management overhead and performance bottlenecks of competing offerings;

• Check Point Software Technologies;
• CyberArk Software;
• Forcepoint, whose Forcepoint Converged Security Platform accelerates the digital transformation journey by enabling the secure migration of data, applications and business operations to the cloud;
• Fortinet;
• Guardicore, whose new version of Guardicore’s Infection Monkey open source attack simulation tool enables broader security assessments across hybrid cloud and data centre environments;
• Illumio, whose release of the Adaptive Security Platform expands Illumio’s intuitive policy model design, effective enforcement and easy API integration for application deployment across compute environments;
• Imperva;
• McAfee;
• Mimecast;
• Netskope, whose NewEdge delivers low-latency infrastructure for all of its cloud and Web security products;
• Palo Alto Networks;
• Proofpoint;
• Qualys;
• Sophos;
• Symantec;
• Trend Micro;
• vArmour, which recently secured a $44 million investment to better protect data and applications that are increasingly being sprawled across public and private cloud environments; and
• Zscaler.