Software

Wirecard CEO is approaching his day of reckoning

16 Jun 2020

The $14 bln payments group is due to publish its delayed 2019 annual results on Thursday. If EY flags issues with its accounts, Markus Braun’s position will be untenable. Even the auditor’s seal of approval may not save the chief executive from investors who want him out.

IBM makes a virtue of facial-recognition necessity

9 Jun 2020

New CEO Arvind Krishna is ending the $117 bln firm’s attempts to develop the technology and questioning whether police should use it. Companies rarely abandon potential profit for PR wins, but it’s easier when operations are small, rivals pull ahead, and regulation threatens.

Corona Capital: Goldman, Vroom, Deutsche Bank

9 Jun 2020

Concise views on the pandemic’s corporate and financial fallout: Goldman does too well in Britain; shares in online used-car sales outfit Vroom double on their market debut; and Deutsche Bank gets another shot at redemption in the U.S. market.

Complacency is as much a disruptor as antitrust

8 Jun 2020

Big Tech critics credit the 1969 push to break up IBM for spurring the today’s software industry. But it was as much Big Blue’s shortsightedness that led to others’ power. As probes of newer tech companies ramp up, Microsoft, with similar challenges, tells a more promising story.

Phones will restore freedom at the cost of privacy

30 Apr 2020

Contact-tracing apps like Apple-Google’s will allow more public mobility but only if related testing is quick and easy, and everybody plays ball. That means democracies will wave sticks, disguised as carrots, to encourage use. Good results would outweigh the Orwellian overtones.

Payment companies will emerge as lockdown winners

3 Apr 2020

Reluctance to touch banknotes and fewer chances to spend them are speeding the shift to digital money. The $1.9 trln global industry will take a short-term hit from lower volumes. But once the pandemic eases, cash will be less relevant. The likes of Adyen and Nexi should benefit.

Lockdowns mean heartburn for meal-delivery market

16 Mar 2020

The $123 bln sector, which includes Uber and Meituan, may sound like a winner as the coronavirus keeps diners indoors. Yet the key office-lunch market is collapsing, and panic buying has filled home kitchens with groceries. Paying sick drivers will add to the financial strain.

Zoom’s work-from-home bump will lose appeal

27 Feb 2020

The $28 bln video-communications firm’s stock has shot up more than 60% in a month, as coronavirus prompts a surge in telecommuting. That suggests a deluge of new users, but also requires them to stick around. It’s somewhat defensible, until working from home loses its charm.

Intuit shows how to tame a fintech unicorn

25 Feb 2020

The $75 bln owner of TurboTax will pay over $7 bln for finance portal Credit Karma. As personal finance gets disrupted, established firms are realizing they can either join in or stand aside. But the large sums at stake mean there’s no free lunch for consumers.

Schneider puts hefty price tag on green M&A

13 Feb 2020

The French industrial company has offered $1.5 bln for Germany's RIB Software, which tracks builders' power usage. The deal taps into the growing value of energy efficiency. But without cost savings, CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire needs punchy sales growth to justify a high premium.

UK M&A machine lifts veil on dealmaking’s dangers

4 Feb 2020

Micro Focus released a brutal assessment of its disastrous $9 bln purchase of HP’s old software business, once called Autonomy. The lesson is that back office IT transitions can be decisive. That’s worrying for investors, who typically have no way to assess such humdrum details.

Elliott’s friendly tech bet faces tough second act

28 Jan 2020

Shares in SAP are up 19% since the activist unveiled a stake. Investors seem to believe the $160 billion company will hit ambitious targets endorsed by Paul Singer’s fund. But tough competition and increasingly muddy governance mean there is limited scope for further quick wins.

U.S.-France digital tax truce could easily unravel

23 Jan 2020

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is no longer demanding that any global Big Tech levy be optional, while Paris will delay collecting payments from groups like Google. That was the easy part. Even basics, such as how much to charge such companies, will be harder to hammer out.

UK’s $13 bln tech scene may already have peaked

15 Jan 2020

Startups in Britain raised 44% more money last year than in 2018. Relative to the size of its economy, UK technology investment now matches the U.S. A Brexit-induced talent squeeze, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s strategic pivot away from London, will cap future growth.

Visa learns sellers have upper hand in fintech M&A

14 Jan 2020

The $421 bln group is shelling out $5.3 bln for Plaid, which enables payments that bypass the card network. For a rich acquisition multiple, it gets a hedge against a potential threat. The U.S. startup’s owners can cash out and let others worry about challenges such as Big Tech.

Finablr faces tricky reboot after Travelex hack

14 Jan 2020

Shares in the London-listed fintech group have fallen 23% after a cyberattack on its bureau de change unit. The $350 mln decline probably overstates the immediate damage. The bigger risk is whether the mess deters corporate clients from Finablr’s faster-growing payments business.

Big Tech will be both friend and foe to Big Pharma

3 Jan 2020

A programme developed by Google has beaten doctors in detecting malignant tumours. Artificial intelligence could save patients’ lives and help drugmakers develop more sophisticated treatments. Yet better screening could also help governments and insurers rein in drug spending.

Xerox buying HP is upside-down

6 Nov 2019

The $8 bln digital printer may make an offer for the $27 bln PC maker. That would require a takeover premium about equal to Xerox’s whole market value and would only make sense with massive cost cuts. If the savings are that big, though, HP should be on the case already.

U.S. tech implosion is opportunity for European VC

21 Oct 2019

WeWork and Uber were hugely overvalued in private markets. In Europe, funding is scarcer and startup valuations seem less extreme. If the bloc’s venture capitalists can defy stagnant, fragmented economies, returns may beat U.S. peers, finally earning them serious money to manage.

Review: Salesforce’s activist CEO has solid pitch

18 Oct 2019

Doing good is a business imperative, Marc Benioff argues in “Trailblazer”. He has put his money where his mouth is on issues like homelessness. His call to action at times reads like a corporate ad. But he makes a persuasive case that helping society can boost the bottom line.