Good week, bad week
Who was a hero and who a zero in the channel last week?
GOOD WEEK
Logicalis and 2e2
The tables have been folded up and the tea urn stored away as the 2e2 jumble sale concluded last week.
Logicalis stepped in to buy its fallen rival's operations in Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands and the Channel Islands for about £20m. In separate news, about 70 UK staff have joined the integrator.
The deal is great news for the overseas businesses' 500 staff and administrators must be pleased to have realised a chunk of change from the ruins of 2e2. Logicalis' boss told us the agreement was one of those rare occasions where "we would have paid more, and they would have accepted less", leaving everyone happy.
Cisco
If Cisco could be likened to a world leader, it would surely be the Sultan of Brunei. If most IT sectors are pluralistic democracies where power must be shared, Cisco has reigned with absolute authority for almost as long as Hassanal Bolkiah has over the south-east Asian state.
And the switching kingpin shows no sign of being overthrown as its enterprise networking market share rose again last year to 54 per cent. Infonetics Research - which compiled the figures - warned rivals they "cannot hope to take on Cisco across all product areas". Looks like HP, Juniper et al must be content on the back benches for a while longer.
Sticking your beak in
Like a prospective mother-in-law running through your wedding guest list with a red marker, top investors at two of the world's leading vendors couldn't help but poke their noses in this week.
First came news that activist investor representatives from CtW Investment Group were calling for HP's two longest-serving directors, Ken Thompson and John Hammergreen, to be axed from a boardroom set-up "hobbled by years' worth of poor judgment".
Meanwhile, Dell's largest external investor Southeastern Asset Management has demanded a closer look at the books before the MBO can be approved.
BAD WEEK
Insolvency practitioners
Alongside pawn shops and bailiffs, insolvency practice must be one of the few professions that profit from a recession. But we're willing to bet that many will have switched from drinking champagne to Blue Nun in recent months, following news that UK business insolvencies have fallen to a five-year low.
According to Experian, just 0.06 per cent of the business population perished in
January, the lowest rate since way back in June 2007 - when most people would have associated the term "credit crunch" with the low-cost cereal bar industry. Still, if business is that bad, they could always seek alternative employment - we hear Poundland is recruiting.
Tech billionaires
Spare a thought for Mark Zuckerberg, who has made it through an emotional week. His standing in the annual Forbes global billionaire list has dropped like the popularity of sponsored posts on a Facebook wall, as he fell from 27th position to 66th. It will be a tough ride for him this year with a personal worth of just $13.3bn, but with a little careful budgeting and maybe shopping at some cut-price supermarkets, he might just make it through.
Michael Dell also saw his position drop and Bill Gates is still unable to displace that pesky Mexican mobile magnate Carlos Slim from the top spot. But overall, there were 94 tech billionaires this year, four more than last year, so it's not all bad, eh?
Alan Sugar
It must have been with irony-fuelled glee that Channel 5 boss and YouView board member Richard Desmond reportedly hollered the infamous "You're fired!" phrase at the Sugarlord last week.
Sources told national media that a blazing row broke out between the pair after Sugar announced he was standing down from the role of chairman, with others claiming the pint-sized peer came at Desmond with a raised fist (presumably in an attempt to punch him in the gut).
And as if being taunted with his own catchphrase wasn't enough (and not for the first time - remember the cheeky teenager who tried it out on our Al at a bike show last year), one of Sugar's former apprentices is claiming constructive dismissal in an employment tribunal.