Markets and IT Services Industry Roundup - week ending May 22, 2009

Markets Roundup:

• Markets closed the week in line with previous week’s close despite sell-off before the long Memorial Day holiday weekend
• Housing starts during April came in at an annualized rate of 458,000, while building permits for April hit a rate of 494,000. Both marked record lows
• Worse-than-expected jobless claims supported the premise that economic conditions remain tenuous. Initial claims for the week ending May 16 totaled 631,000, while continuing claims climbed to a new record of 6.66 million.
• S&P Ratings revised its outlook on the U.K. to negative from stable
• Debate around whether market's rounding action of past 2 weeks will turn into a correction or just a modest consolidation

Industry Roundup:

• Tech services sector stocks were down 1% during the week
• IBM won a seven-year strategic agreement from Ferrosan, an international consumer & healthcare company in Denmark, to manage Ferrosan's IT infrastructure
• Russian Railways, one of the largest railway operators in the world, announced that it is working with IBM to help optimize its IT infrastructure and is using new technologies to improve its freight and passenger management systems
• IBM has been selected by Ling Tung University to build a smarter healthcare system to monitor the health of senior citizens in Taiwan anywhere, at anytime
• IBM announced that Gartner has ranked IBM as the worldwide market share leader in the Portal Products and User Interaction Tools enterprise software segment
• IBM & Bulgarian government announced their cooperation in nano-science & a deal for IBM to support the creation of what will be the first Bulgarian nano-technology center
• Accenture has signed a three-year deal to provide Carlsberg IT with management consulting, systems integration, application development and maintenance, and programme management services in Europe
• CSC announced that it is joining the Mission Support Alliance LLC team as a subcontractor on the Department of Energy’s recently announced award of a Mission Support Contract, which will provide site-wide services to support clean-up work at its Hanford site in southeastern Washington state
• Infosys, TCS and Wipro have featured in the list of 100 best performing technology companies in the world, 'Infotech 100' list for 2009, compiled by BusinessWeek
• HCL Technologies has entered into an outsourcing services engagement with MTV Networks (MTVN) to help MTVN brands in managing technology-led solutions in digital content creation, media asset management, community networking and cross-brand programming. The key benefits to MTVN from this engagement include platform standardization, reliability and business continuity during transition.
• HCL Technologies has announced that ICRA has assigned an A+ rating to the Rs 5 billion Commercial Paper Programme of HCL Technologies. The rating indicates highest credit quality rating assigned by ICRA to short term debt instruments.
• Atheeb Telecom, Saudi Arabia’s latest telecom service provider, announced its new five-year contract with Wipro to deploy an end-to-end IT solution covering operations support systems/ business support systems (OSS/BSS) and underlying infrastructure components.
• EXL Services marked its 10th anniversary by formally unveiling a new branding and visual identity with the new tagline "Go Next. Now" encapsulating its DNA of ‘the Relentless Pursuit of Excellence’. It underscores EXL's commitment to consistently raise the bar through differentiated Transformational Outsourcing services that deliver a unique value proposition to clients.