Industry news

The outsourcing venture Southwest One, between IBM and Somerset council, has achieved savings of £16.2million. However the target savings of £192 million are far off, despite the venture now being halfway through the 10 year project, which ends in 2017.

Recommendations from accountants saw Somerset council place the venture under review, which resulted in legal writs being issued by the two parties against one another, hindering the review and shifting the ventures focus.

Having only achieved 10 percent of planned savings halfway through the venture, Southwest One has been quite in releasing information on how it would achieve the gap in savings targets.

Heinz is set to be bought up by a consortium of Mr Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway company and private equity firm 3G, in a deal worth $28 billion.

The planned takeover saw a New York share rise increase of 20 percent, while Berkshire Hathaway closed at a new record record high.

Having been approved by both boards, the approval of shareholders will be the next step in securing one of the world biggest deals in the food industry.

Heinz chairman, president and chief executive William Johnson, said: “We look forward to partnering with Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital, both greatly respected investors, in what will be an exciting new chapter in the history of Heinz."

Research of global data breach detection rates in 2012 have revealed that serious breaches are going unnoticed for months and in some cases years.

The research carried out by security firm Trustwave found that six in ten organisations in 2012 took longer than three months to detect a data breach.

Of the data breaches analysed by the company in 2012, the average time for discovery was 210 days, an increase in delay from 175 in 2011. 14 percent of the breaches took over two years to be discovered.

The research suggests that organisations are continuing to employ ineffective security measures that are failing to keep up to date with new threats.

Despite increasing uptake and reliance on supply chains, businesses are failing to effectively develop risk management to tackle increasing threats.

A survey by Deloitte of global manufacturing and retail organisations found that 53 percent of all respondents had found that supply chain disruption had become increasingly costly over the past three years. Despite this only just 55 percent believed that their risk management programmes were effective.

Increasing complexity and its impact on cross-collaboration on risk management were cited as reasons for the increasing ineffectiveness of risk management. This reduction comes at a time of increasing disruption from geopolitical movements and rapid economic developments.

After a pilot in large stores, Boots are planning to move forward with a program with Visa Europe and Streamline to roll out contactless payments throughout the UK.

Customers will be able to make payments under £20 through the reader. The contactless payment technology is expected to see significant uptake in 2013, with Visa expecting terminal numbers in the UK to rise to 175,000 as customer demand gradually develops.

Jonathan Vardon, IT director at Boots, said: “Our aim is to offer customers a great shopping experience with quick, easy ways to pay and we believe that contactless payment is one way to deliver this as the technology has helped to reduce transaction and queuing times.”

The Whitbread organisation, which owns Premier Inn, Brewers Fayre and Beefeater, has signed an extended five-year contract with Steria, to provide BPO services.

Steria will continue to deliver accounting and finance service for another five years, having provided services for the past 20 years.

The new contract will reduce annual service costs by 14 percent, which had been a conditional arrangement of the contract extension.

Andrew Pellington, finance director at Whitbread, said: “In the current economic climate, we need to ensure efficiencies are made across the business, and with Steria we know that this is the case".

The existence of the EU 20-20-20 Renewable Energy Directive is widely unknown by IT professionals, with more than 40 percent unaware of the regulation.

The directives regulation is aimed at reducing carbon emissions alongside energy consumption. A survey from energy efficiency company Emerson Network Power has revealed that IT firms have not yet moved to carry out direct measures due to the long length of time before targets need to be achieved.

The uptake of data centres and the value of data analytics have increased energy consumption within the IT sector, with global companies now looking to locate such centres in environments that increase energy efficiency. IT organisations are realising the cost savings from locating services, such as Google establishing data centres in Finland due to the low temperature benefits.

The survey revealed that respondents were passively moving to increase energy efficiency through the modernisation of equipment that increased efficiencies.

After initial estimates of £50 million, G4S have finally agreed to settle with Locog for the failure to deliver on the Olympic contract, for £70 million.

The penalty for failing to provide sufficient personal numbers to cover the arranged security, that G4S had agreed to provide, includes the management fee, which was expected to be retained by the world’s largest security provider. The fallout saw the government deploy armed service personal in order to cover the shortage.

G4S hopes to draw a rapid line over the failure through the £70 million compensation package and reassure the Government, with G4S Chief Executive Nick Buckles saying on Tuesday: “The UK Government is an important customer for the group and we felt that it was in all of our interests to bring this matter to a close in an equitable and professional manner without the need for lengthy legal proceedings".

In recent months the company has shown signs of recovery from the blow to its reputation, with shares rising 10 percent within the past three months, with contracts continuing to be won in the UK.

In a bid to reduce legal tax avoidance methods amidst suppliers, the UK government is looking at plans to require that suppliers bidding for Whitehall contracts reveal their UK tax payments.

Suppliers who minimise their UK tax bills are expected to be prevented from bidding in the future for government contracts, in new rules that are rumoured to be introduced by Francis Maude during this week.

Currently companies including Capgemini and Accenture are among a large list of big name companies that have been criticised for paying low levels of corporate tax.

Despite the strong talk, many companies attacked for paying low tax, are paying a perfectly legal amount, with many ‘loopholes’ existing within law.

It may also prove difficult for the government to blacklist suppliers from a legal perspective, when no laws have been broken.

The alternative would be to reduce so called loopholes. Both methods could be expected to reduce the attractiveness of the UK as a major economic trading hub.

Ryanair’s plan to acquire Aer Lingus for €694 million is to be blocked by the EU competition watchdog according to the budget airline. The final decision is expected to be announced by the end of the month.

Ryanair has revealed that the commission intends to prohibit a bid for a second time after the failure of a similar bid in 2007.

Ryanair has also faced opposition from within government, which owns a 25 percent stake in the Aer Lingus, with a takeover bid in 2009 scrapped. The Irish transport minister, Leo Varadkar, has also opposed the new proposal.