Industry news

Mobile phone company Blackberry is set to be acquired by its largest shareholder Fairfax Financial for £3 billion, if negotiations are successful.

Shareholder Fairfax, which already holds 10 per cent stock of the Canadian phone company, has signed a letter of intent agreement to acquire the company with Blackberry.

Blackberry said in a statement: “Diligence is expected to be complete by November 4, 2013. The parties' intention is to negotiate and execute a definitive transaction agreement by such date.

Blackberry has stated that current discussions with Fairfax do not prevent further negotiations surrounding other offers.

Fairfax's chairman and chief executive Prem Watsa said: “We can deliver immediate value to shareholders, while we continue the execution of a long-term strategy in a private company with a focus on delivering superior and secure enterprise solutions to Blackberry customers around the world."

Negotiations surrounding the sale come after the phone company announced 4,500 job cuts last Friday, in a bid to cut costs.

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BT has overseen the upgrade of Visa’s European communications network framework, which links 350 member sites across 37 different countries.

The network provides services to customers as well as Visa’s own employees. The overhaul will deliver faster payment processing speeds, with increased security, reliability and flexibility, for millions of payment transactions on a daily basis.

Steve Chambers, chief information officer at Visa Europe, said: “We choose to work with BT because we trust them to deliver on their promises. Their expansive global network supports our international connectivity needs and their focus on innovative technology and services aligns with our strategy.”

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New research published by global information services provider Experian has revealed that SMEs are being heavily impacted by supply chain insolvencies.

Research revealed that three-quarters of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have lost money as a result of a customer becoming insolvent.

Of 600 SMEs surveyed, 76 per cent of SMEs have lost money as a result of customers failing over the last five years, with 35 per cent losing over £10,000.

Ade Potts, Managing Director, Experian’s SME business, UK&I, said: “The rate of deterioration is far quicker for companies in today’s climate, so the sooner you can spot the signs of financial stress, the sooner you can react. On-going monitoring, addressing financial issues such as late payment of invoices head-on and not relying on one big customer or supplier will help lessen the risk of further losses as a result of insolvencies.”

The Crown Commercial Service (CCS), the successor to the Government Procurement Service (GPS), is beginning to take shape as the government release the details of four senior positions within the (CCS).

Advertisements placed for the roles of a Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Commercial Delivery Director, an IT Commercial Director, and a Telecommunications Commercial Director, have been revealed by the Cabinet Office, to be for the CCS.

Details of the positions reveal that the newly created CCS will focus on employing technology in order to deliver flexibility and increased efficiency within public sector procurement, while employing increased open-source services.

Public sector departments are failing to deliver value from procurement

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Outsourcing services company Xchanging, has acquired e-sourcing provider MarketMaker4 (MM4), as the outsourcing company looks to expand into the e-sourcing market.

The deal, which is valued at $22 million, will see Xchanging expand its services to include online auction and negotiation services from MarketMaker4.

MM4 has an international client base across a range of sectors and has worked with Xchanging previously. The acquisition will see services from such past commercial arrangements expanded upon.

Ed Cross, executive director of Xchanging Procurement Services (XPS), described how the acquisition would provide: “significant opportunities for XPS to expand its service and product offering into a new market while expanding both MM4 and XPS’ customer base and market opportunity.”

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NextiraOne has been awarded a contract to provide infrastructure management services for Poundland.

A multi-year contract will see NextiraOne run the high-street chain’s network and data centre, alongside monitoring and optimisation services.

The employment of NextiraOne to manage Poundland‘s infrastructure is designed to increase stability, with the network specialists ensuring that the infrastructure remains operational during high stress periods during peak times.

Mike Gray, IT Director at Poundland, said: “By putting in place proactive and preventative service measures, we can minimise business impact and ensure a stable platform for our ongoing growth.”

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The public sector, including the Cabinet Office and the Treasury, has come under criticism from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), with a report saying that they “failed to achieve best value for taxpayers”.

The report identified key weaknesses in the current system, despite praise for the move to centralise procurement. The report identified that independence in departments for spending decisions meant that they were reluctant to give power to a centralised system, which in turn resulted in incomplete procurement data, hindering the Government Procurement Service.

The report also said that the government still had room to improve, when encouraging SMEs to bid for outsourced services, despite recent measures.

Margaret Hodge, PAC chairwoman, said: “The centre of government should be more forceful, rather than simply relying on encouragement and persuasion to get departments to alter their behaviour.

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New public sector rules focus on encouraging SME procurement

U.S. bank JP Morgan Chase has increased its IT investment in analytics and data in order to improve compliance controls.

JP Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon, said that the bank had increased spending on technology by 27 per cent since 2011 to meet regulatory requirements, with around $1 billion spent in 2013 alone. JP Morgan has also increased its IT workforce by 4,000 staff since the start of 2012.

Investment had been focused on data analysis, control reporting and collecting relating to risk.

The move to develop IT to improve compliance comes after recent trading investigations, with the bank currently preparing to settle with the Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for $800 million relating to a loss of $6.2 billion in 2012.

Mr Dimon said: “Never before have we focused so much time, effort, brainpower, technological power and money on a single, enterprise-wide objective”.

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U.S. based chemical manufacturer Ferro expects to save $100 million through the standardisation of procurement processes.

The chemical firm has selected Capgemini and Procurian to help transform indirect spend, with Capgemini providing back-office procurement standardisation, while Procurian will provide management services, including planning, compliance and contracting tools.

The standardisation of services is expected to create significant savings from Efficiency over time.

Peter Thomas said: “The benefits we expect to achieve in our indirect spend procurement function give us further confidence that our cost-saving initiatives will generate savings greater than $100 million”.

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New procurement rules have been announced by the Cabinet Office, with the aim of helping SMEs win increased business within the local public sector, as the government seeks to improve competition and savings through SME service tenders.

A consultation will be run until mid-October, regarding the proposed changes to increase the numbers of SMEs in public procurement, and reduce the dominance of large traditional firms.

Cabinet Office minster Chloë Smith, said: “With £230 billion per year spent on goods and services right across the whole public sector, government wants to seize the opportunity to help hard-working SMEs”.

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