Markets and Industry Roundup - week ending April 10, 2009

Markets Roundup:

• Markets remained range-bound expecting another downbeat earnings season on the horizon
• Dow component Alcoa officially kicked off earnings season Tuesday evening with a deeper-than-expected loss
• February wholesale inventories fell 1.5%
• A better-than-expected earnings preannouncement from Wells Fargo sent the financial sector surging towards the end of the week
• Retail stocks were up following strong earnings by a few retailers and better than expected same-stores sales for March by all retailers
• Securities and Exchange Commission invited public comment on its proposed rules to curb short-selling

Industry Roundup:

• Tech services sector stocks were down 1% during the week; Sun Microsystems shed more than one-fifth of market cap in one session on news of collapse of merger deal with IBM
• IBM announced that Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance, Japan has extended its contract for an additional five years, under which IBM will manage the operation & maintenance of the company's mainframe systems
• IBM signed a 4-year contract with Prague Airport to implement a system to enable it to collect and analyze information for the calculation of airport fees and handling charges
• IBM announced that it has signed a five-year agreement with Sainsbury's, to transform the retailer's supply chain network
• InSite One Inc, the largest cloud provider for medical image data archiving, storage, and disaster-recovery solutions in the US, has chosen IBM as the vendor of choice for its primary datacenter expansion and storage device upgrades
• Accenture won a three-year contract from Carlsberg to provide management consulting, systems integration, application development, application maintenance and program management services in Europe
• HP announced that Almac Group, a global pharmaceutical services provider in Ireland, used HP software to reduce the time required to put new drugs through clinical trials
• The Information Store and CSC have signed an alliance agreement under which CSC will act as the prime systems integrator and consulting services provider
• Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (CMEC), the body formed to set up a new statutory child maintenance scheme, has selected TCS to develop the new IT systems in the form of packaged software available off-the-shelf
• TCS was inducted as the technology partner of Rajasthan Royals (RR), the IPL 2008 champion, to help the team's performance. Under the 3-year agreement, TCS will provide IT solutions to RR, on and off the field, in order to enhance the efficiency of the organization and help retain the IPL championship title for the second season
• Rajasthan government-run power companies have appointed Infosys as IT consultant for implementing centre-funded Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reform Programme (R-APDRP) in 87 cities across the state under the 11th Five-Year Plan
• Satyam entered into a partnership with Pentaho Corp. to offer "On Demand BI (Business Intelligence) solutions" for customers on Pentaho BI Suite Enterprise Edition
• Xerox Corp. will pay $100 million over six years to outsource data-center services to HCL Technologies. As part of the deal, HCL will manage disaster-recovery preparation for Xerox and consolidate the company's data centers in North America and Europe
• HCL Technologies has bagged a 5-year IT services contract worth $170 million from Microsoft. HCL has become a strategic vendor for providing technology services to Microsoft for its online services business
• Cognizant CEO Francisco D'souza announced that it is scouting for acquisitions to diversify its presence in the Asia-Pacific region
• Doylestown Hospital announced that Perot Systems has successfully assisted the hospital's implementation of an advanced Health Care Information System (HCIS)
• Perot Systems announced that it won a 3-year, $15 million contract within the Department of Defense, Defense Travel Management Office (DTMO)
• Wipro announced that Wipro BPO has been recognized as the Best New BPO Locator of the year at the International ICT Awards, held recently in Manila
• Wipro announced that it has implemented SAP ERP ECC 6.0 for HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited (HMEL)’s refinery business in India
• EXL announced the renewal of its strategic outsourcing relationship with Centrica, PLC (British Gas). Under the terms of the renewed contract, EXL will continue to provide comprehensive services including complex back office processes, debt management and analytics for an additional three year term through April 2012