TECH DEALS: Indian double-up for Macquarie

Tech Deals is a weekly column covering the latest deals in one of the busiest sectors for M&A. To read previous articles go to our Tech Deals page.

Macquarie Bank

Macquarie Bank can now boast not one but two Indian outsourcing giants on its roster to maintain and support its IT infrastructure, with the company reportedly signing a $10 million three year deal with India's HCL Technologies. HCL flagged the deal last Wednesday during its full year results saying that it had entered into an “engagement” with a global investment bank to provide support and maintenance services for its IT Infrastructure. The name of the bank was not revealed at the time but The Australian Financial Review reports, citing sources, that it was Macquarie. The bank reportedly already has some existing agreements with the HCL's rival WIPRO Technologies and the deal with HCL comes at a time when it is starting to pay closer attention to the Asia Pacific region, particularly Australia. HCL's global chief executive and vice-chairman, Vineet Nayar, was in Australia in March and flagged at the time that the company was keen to forge closer relationships with the government and local universities. According to the AFR, industry insiders have been surprised by the move given HCL's relatively small customer base in Australia. Well the Macquarie deal should help rectify that issue.

MOKO Mobi, mbuzzy.com   

Perth-based listed mobile social networking company MOKO.Mobi has bumped up its global user base to over 12.7 million with a $3 million stock deal to acquire US mobile site mbuzzy.com. The transaction will see US mobile content provider and mbuzzy's owner Sendme Inc take a 10 per cent stake in Moko, which provides registered mobile phone users a platform to interact, upload photos and play games. Under the terms of the deal, which adds over 7.2 million registered users in the US, Moko will also issue Sendme nine million listed options at 10 cents each and the provision of $5 million in placements over the next six months. Sendme's chief executive Russell Klein will join Moko's board as a non-executive director. Moko's founder and CEO Ian Rodwell said his company has been looking for a way to strengthen its presence in the US for some time and securing the partnership with Sendme helps that cause. It's also a good move for Sendme which gets to venture outside its home ground. The deal certainly looks like a good fit for the companies given that Sendme, founded in 2006, is in the business of turning the mobile phone into a fully fledged entertainment portal, with plenty of content and gaming options. Moko gets to build scale by taking over the reins at mbuzzy.com and Sendme finds another avenue for its content.  

American Express, Facebook

American Express is getting into the deals market with great gusto with the global financial services giant and the biggest credit-card issuer by purchases joining forces with Facebook to deliver customised discounts and offers to cardholders. The deal allows Amex to utilise its “Link, Like, Love” application on its Facebook page to let its customers link card accounts to their own pages and The Australian reports that the service may make its way to Australia. An Amex Australia spokesperson told the paper while there is no set date on when the product will be available to Australian customers the capabilities of the application are designed to ensure an eventual global rollout. She added that the company planned to tie-up with Australian-only merchants. Amex already has an established rewards program in Australia that covers deals from the likes of Westfield, Flight Centre and Crown Towers.

Local wrap

Pearson Australia has completed its deal with Ferrier Hodgson, the receivers of REDgroup – the owner of Borders and Angus & Robertson – to buy Borders' online business. This will be Pearson Australia's first foray online and the company has flagged some changes, telling its customers that the site will be more Australian focused and will look to provide prompt delivery of product. The e-book relationship between Borders and Kobo Australia will remain intact. Meanwhile, Amcom Telecommunications has scored a $9 million deal to provide hosted cloud services to the University of Western Australia (UWA). The three year partnership will involve Amcom hosting dedicated cloud services for UWA in Amcom's secure Data Centres in Perth. In other news, information management provider Recall has bought the document destruction business of Melbourne-based, Infoshred. Under the deal, Recall has acquired the service and collection component of Infoshred's secure destruction business. Perth-based ISP iiNet has joined New Zealand submarine cable venture Pacific Fibre as its second foundation customer to use its 12,750-kilometre link to the US. The ISP now joins the New Zealand government and the country's education fibre network as anchor tenants for the cable, which was expected to get started in 2013. Elsewhere, another Kiwi company, this time accounting software provider Xero is set to acquire Australian payroll startup Paycycle, for $1.5 million. Under the terms of the agreement Xero will give Paycycle $500,000 dollars in cash and $1 million in shares.

Overseas wrap

Oracle has announced the acquisition of knowledge management vendor InQuira in a bid to improve the capabilities of its Fusion and Siebel CRM (customer relationship management) applications. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close later this year, were not disclosed. Meanwhile, GPS giant Garmin has completed its acquisition of rival Navigon and CNET Australia reports both companies have so far declined to comment on what implications the deal might have on the Australian GPS market. Garmin is one of the big three operators in Australia and Navigon is also a substantial player in the scene. For now it looks like brand integration down under will have to wait until the merger is fully bedded down. In other news, UK-based digital music service Spotify has had a rough introduction to life in the US with the company facing legal action for patent infringement within weeks of entering the US market. Spotify is being sued by PacketVideo, a company that took on the challenge of putting streaming video on mobile phones, before the dawn of the smartphone. Things didn't quite work out for PacketVideo and the company was picked up by Japanese mobile giant NTT Docomo in August last year. Speaking of legal action and patent violations, Rovio, the outfit behind Angry Birds is being sued by US-based patent licensing company Lodsys. According to Lodsys, the Finnish game maker has violated its patents which cover the methods for purchasing new levels inside the Angry Birds game.