SAP to buy Ariba, boosts cloud bet
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Top European software company SAP AG plans to buy Ariba Inc in a deal valuing the business and commerce network company at $4.3 billion, its latest maneuver against Oracle in the fast-growing Internet-based computing market. SAP is taking aim at Oracle, the world's No. 2 maker of business management software, as they vie with Salesforce.com Inc in the multibillion dollar cloud-computing services market, one of the industry's hottest area of growth. Shares in Ariba, which were halted briefly, leapt 20 percent to SAP's offer price of about $45 per share. ...
Watch: Control Your Computer With the Wave of a Hand
Leap Motion is a new accessory that can track subtle finger movements.
Analysis: Did banks cross the line in Facebook research calls?
NEW YORK (Reuters) - As regulators scrutinize Facebook's problem-plagued stock market debut, they may have to confront areas of securities law that do not always clearly spell out what industry analysts are allowed to tell clients about companies on the verge of going public. Facebook and the Wall Street banks that underwrote its $16 billion initial public offering are facing questions about how and why stock analysts decided to cut their financial forecasts on the company ahead of the IPO. ...
Funds with Facebook hammered as proxy by shorts
(Reuters) - Some investment funds have paid a price for their friendship with Facebook since the social networking giant went public last week. Firsthand Technology Value Fund and GSV Capital Corp, two closed-end funds that bought shares of the social media company before the IPO, have taken a beating, used as proxies for betting against Facebook. "Until investors can actually short Facebook, they have to keep shorting things that can give them some sort of proxy for Facebook," said Thomas Vandeventer, manager of the Tocqueville Opportunity Fund, which owns shares in both closed-end funds. ...
Best Buy tops expectations in Q1, online revenue and mobile sales up
Best Buy on Tuesday reported results for the first quarter of 2012. The electronics retail giant posted better-than-expected earnings per share, despite declining store sales. Revenue came in at $11.6 billion, ahead of analysts’ consensus of $11.52 billion, and non-GAAP earnings came in at $0.72 per share, up 11% from the same quarter in 2011 and beating the Street’s estimates of $0.59 per share. Domestic online revenue rose by 20%, and domestic mobile-phone sales increased by 13%. “Best Buy is in a turnaround, and the strategic priorities we laid out at the beginning of the year are just the first phase of the changes to come,” said Mike Mikan, CEO (interim) of Best Buy. “We know we have to better
Watch: TechBytes: WiFi, File Sharing
Five cable operators will team up to give customers more access to WiFi.
