Industry news

The iPhone and iPad maker paid $713m (£445m) in overseas corporation tax on foreign profits of $36.87bn (£23bn) in the year to the end of September. That translates as a tax rate of 1.9%, compared to a headline corporation tax rate of 35% in the US and 24% in the UK.

The details were revealed in Apple's 10K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Apple has not broken any laws by arranging its tax payments this way, but it is likely to reignite debate about the astonishingly small amount of tax US multinationals pay in the UK.

Google, Amazon and Starbucks will be hauled before the Commons public accounts committee on Monday to explain why they pay so little tax to the exchequer.

Serco Group plc (Serco) has announced that it has been re-selected to provide waste, recycling and street cleansing services on behalf of Canterbury City Council following a competitive tendering process. Serco has been Canterbury's environmental services partner for over 15 years. The contract, which starts in April 2013, will see Serco continuing to deliver these services for up to a further eight years, under a contract valued up to £40m.

Following the comprehensive competitive tender process, Serco's proposal was judged the best against the council's tender evaluation criteria of a price/quality ratio of 60/40 per cent. Under the contract, Serco will work with the council and the local community to develop, improve and transform the quality of the local environment, as well as delivering an increase in recycling rates.

Richard Williams, Managing Director of Serco's Local Direct and Transport business, Serco said, "We are delighted that we have been successful and that we will again partner Canterbury City Council to deliver environmental services. We can build on our deep understanding of the district and the requirements of the local population to reflect their service needs. This means we will deliver what is needed, when it is needed and where it is needed and we will reduce the use of unnecessary resources and therefore, costs."

Rain, recession and regulation have been the cause for a decrease in revenue, according to BT CEO Ian Livingston.

Revenues fell by 9 percent from July to September to a total of £4.47 billion. Mr Livingston said that along with the effects of the recession and increased regulation, rain had increased the number of overall engineer callouts, taking resources away from expansion.

Recent business difficulties for BT has included the rejections of a proposed public shared services programme by Cornish Council which resulted in the ousting of council Tory leader Alec Robertson. BT has also been in tender for a back office outsourcing project with Barnet London Council which may now be potentially scrapped when a vote is taken next week on wether to oust Tory leader Richard Cornelius.

Despite reduced revenue and public sector setbacks BT has moved forward on service development projects including the roll-out of superfast fibre optic broadband, which has been brought forward by several months.

In research carried out by professional advisory Ernst & Young, nearly nine out of ten CIOs surveyed said that they saw an increasing threat from IT security attacks.

Reports of attacks were also on the increase with 88 percent of UK organisations reporting increasing attacks compared to 72 percent from this time last year.

The survey also revealed that while 77 percent or organisations surveyed were now employing cloud services, a fifth of cloud users had employed no further security measures with the employment of the service.

The UK government’s eMarketplace has seen a 90 percent increase in transactions. The service established in 2006 and hosted by Procserve provides a procurement network of over 20,000 suppliers to government departments.

Procserve CEO Nigel Clifford said that the increase was a result of an increasing focus on procurement by the public sector.

Mr Clifford said “There is now a view that procurement is important and can lead to less painful ways of achieving cost reductions. Look at the Department for Work and Pensions as an example. It is using our electronic tools to run mini competitions to find training courses for the long-term unemployed.”

Outsourcing giant Wipro has moved to focus on its core IT offering by moving non-IT services to a separate company.

Services separated to the separate business named Wipro Enterprises include consumer care, lighting and diagnostic services.

The separated services will continue to function independently from the IT focused side of Wipro. The announcement of the division comes shortly before the release of Wipro’s fiscal results for the second quarter of 2012.

Routine NHS-funded operations carried out by the private sector increase by over 10 percent between 2011 and 2012.

In explaining the increase the Department for Health has said that patients are increasingly employing private health care providers.

The health minister, Lord Howe, said “The crucial thing here is that patients have access to the highest quality services possible. Letting patients choose how and where they are treated is not new. We want to give patients more choice about where, when and how they can access their health services”.

A study commissioned by the DfT has revealed that the procurement process had contained serious flaws.

The report conducted by Centrica also identified failures in transparency and in the process of risk calculation. Despite being aware of failures in following its own guidelines the DfT continued the bidding process.

The report detailed that: “These errors appear to have been caused by factors including inadequate planning and preparation, a complex organisational structure and a weak governance and quality assurance framework.”

ICT savings of £490 million have been announced this week by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude.

Current estimates on the overall annual ICT spend place the cost at over £17 billion. Total savings within departments are expected to reach £8 billion by the end of the year.

Francis Maude said: ““We have said we want to be saving £20 billion a year by 2015 and savings of this magnitude cannot come by trimming budgets here and there. That’s why we are working to transform Whitehall into a leaner, more efficient machine that manages its finances like the best-run businesses,”

Outsourcing giant Capgemini has increased its apprenticeship uptake and doubled its intake from 98 to 200.

The move comes after the company received an increase in applications from school-leavers after university price rises.

Capgemini has also taken part in the development of the Charter Group which has developed apprenticeship charter detailing skills and standards with other businesses including Accenture, Atos, CSC, Fujitsu, HP, Logica, Siemens and Steria.

Frances Duffy, HR director for Capgemini application services, said: “Apprentices are now vital in widening the pool of IT talent, addressing skills shortages, and helping to ensure that the UK can continue to compete successfully in world markets.”