Tag: deal

Ebay does deal with Icahn

Posted on January 22, 2015 by - News

Faustian_BargainOnline auction outfit Ebay has done a deal with its activist investor Carl Icahn that will give investors a greater say in its PayPal payments unit once it is spun off.

Ebay said it exploring a sale or public offering of its enterprise unit.

The deal clears the way for a future buy  of eBay and PayPal by companies looking to gain a foothold in the e-commerce and online payments markets. Alibaba, Google and Amazon could all be interested.

Meanwhile Ebay is going to cut its workforce by seven percent, or 2,400 jobs, in the current quarter. While the company is making a pile of money, its outlook for the 2015 first quarter and full year fell short of what the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street expected, so its workers will have to pay the price.

The planned job cuts will be across the board in all parts of the company except the board. Payments and enterprise divisions will be hit, eBay said. Restructuring and separation costs are expected to be between $210 million and $240 million in the first quarter and $350 million to $400 million for the entire year.

Also under the deal with Ichan, Icahn Capital executive Jonathan Christodoro was named to eBay’s board. He will have the ability to transition to PayPal’s board once the spin-off occurs.

Two Wall Street bankers has been added to its board, because you always need a board full of bankers.

PayPal agreed to adopt a number of measures proposed by Icahn, which the billionaire said enhance corporate governance at the fast-growing payments arm. The provisions are intended to give shareholders a larger voice in important decisions, particularly an acquisition bid.

They include a provision that any “poison pill” designed to ward off acquisition attempts be ratified by stockholders or expire after 135 days, and that holders of 20 percent of its shares be allowed to call a special meeting of stakeholders.

EBay plans to split its marketplace division from PayPal in the second half of this year. PayPal will be a standalone publicly traded company, which some analysts say will be worth $40 billion.

 

Avnet and Macronix sign pan European deal

Posted on May 28, 2013 by - News

avnettsAvnet Memec has signed a pan-European agreement with Macronix.

The distie has agreed to help Macronix bring NOR, NAND and ROM technology to its customers across Europe at the earliest stage of their design.

According to Avnet, adding Macronix’ Flash memory products its portfolio will add depth to its line-card and service offering, while the semiconductor company said that the support by its new pal would help it reach those customers early in their design cycle.

Macronix Flash memory devices are available now from Avnet Memec and to help customers select the correct device for their application datasheets and support documentation is available from Macronix.com.

Adata and Etna Technology sign agreement

Posted on May 28, 2013 by - News

Craig-Connell-and-Jon-AthertonAdata has signed on the dotted line with distie Etna Technology.

Under the new agreement, which comes into effect as Computex takes place over in Taiwan, the pair will work together to push Adata’s memory products.

Jon Atherton, Commercial Vice President for Enta, said it was looking forward to working with Adata which was “a great brand with an exciting roadmap”.

Craig Connell, head of regional sales for ADATA, said Enta was “exactly the kind of distributor” the company had been looking for.

Asked about the most immediate benefits, Connell said the launch of Intel’s 4th Generation Core Processor family would see a strong surge in demand for very fast memory products, such as the new 2,800MHz DDR3 modules that the company had just launched.

He said Enta had a strong reputation among the kind of stores that would be selling Z87 boards and the company want to make sure that as many as possible came supplied with ADATA DDR3”.

According to analyst house iSuppli, ADATA became the world’s second largest supplier for DDR memory modules in 2010.

UserReplay, Star-Archats team up

Posted on May 22, 2013 by - News

cosyUserReplay has got all cosy with with Star-Achats.

The Session replay software startup has signed a deal with the French distributor in a bid to expand its reach into the pan-European eCommerce market.

According to Star-Achats the French eCommerce market now includes 120,000 e-commerce sites and will account for more than 53 billion Euros in transactions in 2013.

It added that major French financial institutions were also increasing their online banking offerings.

The company, which represents American and British software companies in the growing French-speaking markets of France, Belgium and Switzerland, said UserReply would fit in well in the markets as because of these factors.

UserReplay is claimed to allow users to record, re-run and analyse every visitors’ journey through a website. This aims to help customer service desks and support staff can use this information to quickly identify problems with the website.

Apparently this saves days for the web development team as they don’t have to try and replicate what happened based on vague details from the customer.

Other key uses of session replay are in resolving complaints and disputes with customers, recovering abandoned checkout pages and even protecting against online fraud.

Corero Network security and Infinigate UK get cosy

Posted on March 14, 2013 by - News

cosyCorero Network  Security has got close and personal with Infinigate UK.

The company has appointed the specialist security distributor known previously as Vigil Software to distribute its Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) defence products.

The deal will give Infinigate access to the range of products claimed to block traditional volume based DDoS attacks,  newer application-layer attacks, zero-day and server targeted attacks that evade traditional firewall defences.

Infinigate boasts it was selected as the UK distributor due to “its in-depth security expertise and focus”. It says it offers Corero to extend its reach into other European territories via its subsidiaries in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Denmark.

Infinigate UK will be implementing Corero’s  SecureWatch Partner Programme, with a view to adding selected new resellers, particularly those with experience in key markets where Corero has deep traction including banking and finance, e-commerce, online gaming and gambling.

The new programme is designed to enable resellers to deploy security solutions that help enterprises and government organisations thwart the rising tide of DDoS and targeted attacks and address a market that, according to Infonetics Research, grew by 24 percent last year and is set to reach $420 million by 2016.

BSkyB O2 Telefonica deal is “significant”

Posted on March 1, 2013 by - News

Hands across the waterThe acquisition of UK Telefonica’s O2 broadband by BSkyB is “significant” for both customers and the industry, an expert has said.

The comments by Andrew Ferguson, editor at ThinkBroadband, come as BSkyB announced it would buy its rival’s 500,000 customer accounts for £180 million, including the O2 and BE consumer broadband and home phone businesses. It said the by gobbling up its rival it would be able to provide advantages of scale for its home communications business.

Currently BSkyB has around 3.6 million customers, who pay for the company’s TV, broadband and telephone services

The deal is due to complete by the end of April, subject to regulatory approval. Once it has been signed off, all O2 and BE broadband customers will be switched to BskyB’s all-fibre network.

“The acquisition is significant both for the customers involved who have elected to join a partial LLU service, rather than the fully unbundled options sold by TalkTalk and Sky and for the industry overall, as we now have a new second largest retail broadband provider,” Mr Ferguson told ChannelEye.

“For the industry as a whole the sale of the O2/Be customers means that the last significant partial LLU service (where telephone is left on the WLR platform and only the broadband is ran over the providers own hardware) is vanishing, at least in terms of the consumer retail arena. This means that the vast majority of the unbundled services in the UK actually have both their telephone and broadband service provided over a Sky or TalkTalk MSAN (MSAN being a DSLAM providing multiple services).”

However, he added that the acquisition would also remove the Be retail network “which while  has remained small was well loved by its generally loyal customers”.

The company was also the provider that pushed ADSL2+ onto the UK market and also gave the people control over the various parameters of the ADSL2+ service, meaning customers could tweak the performance of their line to be the best in terms of line speed and latency.

However, this could be both good and bad news for both smaller providers.

“The Sky LLU platform tends to favour stability at the expense of a small amount of connection speed and latency, this means we are expecting to see a fair number of Be customers migrating to other smaller providers,” Mr Ferguson said.

“In terms of the regulatory position, it means Ofcom is now really regulating just five major players which control 94.4 percent of the retail sector in the UK.

“The problem with this dominance by a handful of major players is that it will be increasingly difficult for the small providers who service the pro-sumer and SME sector to get their voice heard,” he added.

Computer 2000 signs agreement with 3Dconnexions

Posted on February 21, 2013 by - News

Hands across the waterComputer 2000 has signed on the dotted line with 3Dconnexions.

Under a new agreement the UK arm of Tech Data will distribute 3Dconnexion’s range of 3D mice, which the company claims lets users interact with content intuitively, making it easier for engineers to work faster and more ergonomically.

Using the 3D mouse controller cap, users can simultaneously pan, zoom and rotate their 3D models or camera position while using the standard mouse or tablet to select, create and edit.

Paul Jacobs, General Manager of the PC Components business unit at Computer 2000 said the price points, which ranged from £99 to £299, meant that there was “plenty of margin opportunity”.

John Moseley, Director of Global Marketing for 3Dconnexion, said the partnership meant the company would be open to more opportunities as a result of gaining a greater visibility and access to the wider channel community.

The 3Dconnexion range is being managed by Computer 2000’s PC Components business unit. It includes the SpacePilot Pro, SpaceMouse Pro, SpaceNavigator and SpaceNavigator for Notebooks.