NTT forms London-based subsidiary

NTT’s announcement was one of the main stories of the international ICT market last week.

At home, various announcements by EOH and Naspers were the local highlights.

• PayU, Naspers’ payments and fintech business, acquired a majority stake in Red Dot Payment, a Southeast Asia-focused online payment solutions provider.

• RIB, a wholly owned subsidiary of German-listed RIB Software, bought 70% of Construction Computer Software together with its subsidiaries, which is currently held by EOH Mthombo. The deal was worth R444.39 million.

• EQT and Naspers led a EUR30 million investment, via the Naspers Ventures division, in European micro-mobility firm Dott.

• Leratadima Marketing Solutions, one of the chosen three companies to manufacture the first batch of government-subsidised set-top boxes, has been placed into liquidation.

• The MTN Group’s GlobalConnect, its wholesale infrastructure firm, is now an operating company of the group and will be headquartered in Dubai.

• A renewed JSE cautionary by EOH.

• The appointment of Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa as CEO of Naspers SA.

• Mixed year-end figures from Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, with revenue up 32.2% but profit down 19.7%.

• A full-year loss from TelOne (Zimbabwe), although revenue up 5%.

• Workz Group, an Ireland-based IOT and mobile solutions provider, has opened an office in Dakar, Senegal, to engage the West African telecommunications market. The Dakar office is the company's second location in Africa, after establishing an office in Johannesburg, South Africa, in June 2018.

• ENGO Holdings, a Chinese electronics firm, has joined Uganda’s industrial sector to domestically manufacture and assemble mobile phones and laptop computers.

• The appointment of Michael Joseph as interim CEO of Safaricom.

• The death of Bob Collymore, CEO of Safaricom.

• Applied Materials acquired Kokusai Electric from KKR, a private equity company, for $2.2 billion.

• Contentsquare, which provides insights into customers’ digital experiences, bought Israeli rival Clicktale.

• EPAM Systems purchased an educational content services company, Competentum, and its learning platform, ShareKnowledge.

• Exabeam, a cyber security firm, acquired SkyFormation, an Israeli cloud application security company.

Britain’s competition regulator has launched an investigation into the power wielded by Facebook and Google in digital advertising markets.

• KKR bought Corel from another private equity firm, Vector Capital, for more than $1 billion.

• NCR purchased D3 Technology, a provider of online and mobile banking for the large financial institution market.

• Ricoh acquired DocuWare, a cloud and on-premises document management and workflow automation software business.

• ScanSource bought intY, a UK-based distributor of cloud services.

• StorCentric purchased Retrospect, which develops data protection and recovery tools for consumers, prosumers and SMEs. It also bought Vexata, an all-flash array vendor.

• Apple's main regulator in the European Union, Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner, opened a third privacy investigation into the iPhone maker over the past few weeks.

• Britain’s competition regulator has launched an investigation into the power wielded by Facebook and Google in digital advertising markets, including the ownership of data.

• Equinix has formed a joint venture with GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, to develop and operate xScale data centres in Europe. The JV is worth more than $1 billion and is 20% owned by the former and 80% by the latter.

• German authorities have issued Facebook with a EUR2 million fine under a law designed to combat hate speech.

• Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation has launched NTT, a global technology services provider that brings together the capabilities of 28 companies, including NTT Communications, Dimension Data and NTT Security, into one $11 billion business. It will be headquartered in London.

• A full-year loss from IMImobile.

• The appointments of Wendy Becker as chairman of Logitech; Randall S Dearth as CEO of GCP Applied Technologies; and Gregory E Poling as executive chairman of GCP Applied Technologies (was CEO).

• The resignations of Vinod Kumar, CEO of Tata Communications; Krishnakumar Natarajan, executive chairman of Mindtree; NS Parthasarathy, vice-chairman of Mindtree; and Rostow Ravanan, CEO of Mindtree.

• The retirement of Ronald Cambre, chairman of GCP Applied Technologies.

• The departure of Guerrino De Luca, chairman of Logitech.

• A very good IPO in Mumbai by IndiaMart InterMesh, India’s largest online platform for selling products directly to businesses, which is backed by foreign investors such as Intel Capital and UK-based Amadeus Capital.

• Worldwide:

• Worldwide spending on public cloud services and infrastructure will more than double over the 2019-2023 forecast period, according to IDC. With a five-year CAGR of 22.3%, public cloud spending will grow from $229 billion in 2019 to nearly $500 billion in 2023.

• Spending on customer experience was reported at $97 billion in 2018 and is expected to increase to $128 billion by 2022, growing at a healthy 7% five-year CAGR, according to IDC.

• Inkjet-printed OLED display technology is set to enter mass production next year, with capacity set to rise as much as 12-fold from 2020 to 2024, according to IHS Markit.

• JSE All share index: Down 1.1%

• FTSE100: Up 1.7% (highest weekend close since August 2018)

• DAX: Up 1.4% (highest weekend close since August 2018)

• NYSE (Dow): Up 1.2% (highest weekend close)

• S&P 500: Up 1.7% (highest weekend close)

• Nasdaq: Up 1.9% (all-time high reached during the week)

• Nikkei225: Up 2.2%

• Hang Seng: Up 0.8%

• Shanghai: Up 1.1%

• International:

• Broadcom acquiring Symantec.

• South Africa:

• Further developments regarding the EOH investigations.

Each year, Forbes magazine publishes its Global 2000 list of the world’s largest public companies. The list, using data from FactSet Research Systems, is an aggregate ranking across the metrics of sales, profit, assets and market value.

Some further analysis of these rankings:

• 176: SAP (was 178)

• 248: Accenture (was 288)

• 279: HP (was 247)

• 418: Naspers (was 531)

• 426: Xiaomi (highest new entry)

• 431: Netflix (was 602)

• 446: Salesforce.com (was 856)

• 464: Vodafone (was 454)

• 470: Dell (was 462)

• 482: HPE (was 316)

• 505: Adobe (was 627)

• 598: VMware (was 780)

• 642: Nokia (was 632)

• 699: Lenovo (was 1 080)

• 936: MTN (was 1 069)

• 1 001: ZTE (was 682)

• 1 100: Twitter (was 1 729)

• 1 464: Red Hat (was 1 651)

• 1 508: Maroc Telecom (was 1 509)

• 1 513: Xerox (was 1 538)

• 1 587: Symantec (was 1 104)

• 1 680: Safaricom (was 1 817)

• 1 726: Seiko Epson (was 1 887)