Verizon buys AOL

Verizon's acquisition of AOL dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, Altron's proposed sell-off of Autopage's GSM subscriber base and the Competition Commission's approval of the Telkom/Business Connexion deal were the main stories.

* Good year-end figures from Datatec, with revenue up 13.3% and profit up 37.8%.
* A full-year loss from Altron, with revenue also down slightly.
* Gijima's listing of its shares of on the JSE was terminated.
* The Varachia Investment Group (VIG) intends to make a firm offer to acquire all the ordinary shares in Morvest, excluding those ordinary shares in Morvest held by concert parties of VIG.
* The Competition Commission has approved Telkom SA's acquisition of Business Connexion.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by Altron and Telkom SA.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Morvest Business Group.
* Sunil Geness was named president of ITA for the period 2015/16. Geness is a member of SAP's Global Corporate Affairs team and serves as the director of Government Relations and CSR at SAP Africa.
* The appointment of Herman Singh as group head of digital at MTN.
* The resignation of Herman Singh, Vodacom's managing executive of mobile commerce.

* CEC Liquid Telecom acquired Realtime Technology Alliance Africa, Zambia's second largest ISP.
* Networks Unlimited has opened an office in Kenya.
* The appointments of Ebenezer Asante as CEO of MTN Ghana (was CEO of MTN Rwanda); and Diego Gutierrez, who resumes as GM of Tigo Tanzania following the completion of the tenure of interim GM Cecile Tiano.
* The resignation of Serame Taukobong, CEO of MTN Ghana.

The Competition Commission has approved Telkom SA's acquisition of Business Connexion.

* Verizon Communications acquired AOL for $4.4 billion, in a deal aimed at advancing the former's growth ambitions in mobile video and advertising.
* Alibaba made a 9.3% investment in Zulily, a US-based online retailer.
* A US appeals court said Limelight Networks did not directly infringe a patent on managing Web images and video held by rival Akamai Technologies.
* Sprint and Verizon Wireless will pay a total of $158 million to resolve claims by US regulators that the wireless carriers separately billed customers millions of dollars in unauthorised charges for premium text messages.
* Excellent quarterly results from Arista Networks and Foxconn Technology.
* Good quarterly numbers from Rackspace Hosting and Telefonica.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Applied Materials, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Singapore Telecom, TalkTalk and Tencent.
* Mediocre quarterly results from ChipMOS Technologies and Symantec.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Asustek Formula Systems, with revenue up but profit down; Magic, with revenue down but profit up; TeleTech Holdings, with revenue up but profit down; and Trend Micro, with revenue up but profit down.
* Mixed year-end figures from Softbank, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Asure Software, Document Security Systems, Engility Holdings, Exar, GoDaddy, Stratasys, Tower Semiconductor, Zayo Group and Zebra Technologies.
* Full-year losses from Sharp and Spotify.
* The appointments of Nikesh Arora as president of Softbank; Sigve Brekke as CEO of Telenor; and Paul Peng as chairman of AU Optronics.
* The resignations of Jon Fredrik Baksaas, CEO of Telenor; and KY Lee, chairman of AU Optronics.
* An IPO filing from Mindbody, a provider of fitness software.

Worldwide:
* The worldwide supply chain management and procurement software market grew 10.8% in 2014, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide personal and entry-level storage shipments declined by 6.4% year-over-year and 13.6% sequentially, finishing the first quarter of 2015 with 17.6 million units, according to IDC. Shipment values declined along with unit shipments, down 11.6% from a year ago to $1.5 billion.
* The global PC market, including tablets, experienced an annual decline of 7% in Q1 2015, reaching 115.7 million units worldwide, according to Canalys.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.4%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.9%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.4%
* S&P 500: Up 0.3%
* FTSE100: Down 1.2%
* Nikkei225: Up 1.8%
* Hang Seng: Up 0.9%
* Shanghai: Up 2.4%

International:
* Cypress Semiconductor buying Integrated Silicon Solution at a higher price than ISSI's pending $640 million deal with a Chinese consortium.
* The outcome of Deutsche Telekom EUR900 million offer for the shares of Slovak Telekom it doesn't already own (49%).
* The future of Sharp following a 'bale-out' by the Japanese banks.

South Africa:
* The details of the sell-off of Altech Autopage's GSM subscriber base.

African Business has published its annual 'Africa's top 250 companies' listing, which is based on market capitalisations. From a technology perspective, the following were included:

* 3: Naspers (up from number five)
* 5: MTN (up from number six)
* 12: Vodacom Group (new entry)
* 17: Maroc Telecom (down from 13)
* 26: Safaricom
* 40: Sonatel (down from 30)
* 46: Telkom SA (up from 65)
* 64: Telecom Egypt (down from 36)
* 70: Global Telecom Holding (Egypt) (up from 139)
* 85: EOH (up from 85)
* 121: Datatec (was 151)
* 138: Reunert (was 84)
* 153: Econet Wireless (was 150)

Other entrants include (alphabetically) Airtel Networks Zambia, Altron, Blue Label Telecoms and Onatel.

As I am currently overseas, my next column will only appear on 8 June, but will fully cover the intervening period.