Industry news

Capgemini will provide application services for E.ON over a five year period in a contract worth €50m.

The move comes as the energy giant seeks to restructure its IT infrastructure and employ smart technology in energy monitoring and metering services.

The transition of outsourced services has already commenced and will see Capgemini fulfil roles in software development and information management.

HMRC have increased tax revenues from the deployment of business intelligence systems, which have allowed the company to catch tax avoidance at greater levels.

Through the use of HMRC’s CONNECT system and data analysis, the department has been able to categorise tax payers and non-payers, allowing to generate £1.4 billion in additional tax.

Treasury Minister, David Gauke MP, said: "For next to no cost, HMRC has seen up to a 15 percent improvement in payment behaviour in some trials, simply by changing the way in which they communicate."

Intel, AMD and Nvidia have all been downgraded by Citigroup analyst Glen Yeung, claiming that a turn away from the PC towards mobile systems are significantly affecting these companies.

Yeung described how the rise of mobile applications has taken significant business away from PC companies, and that he did not expect the release of Windows 8 to reverse this change.

Yeung said in a report by Wall Street Cheat Sheet. “our downgrade today reflects our checks in Asia that stoke our concerns that the intermediate term prospects for PC’s do not look optimistic".

HMRC has achieved savings of up to £226 million through savings including IT efficiencies and improved benchmarking.

The transformation programme has already delivered substantial cost savings, despite the programme only being half way through, according to the chief information officer Phil Pavitt.

The implementation of the HMRC Aurora programme, which aimed to retire excess IT staff members and migrate remaining workers to selected IT solutions, was highlighted as being key to delivering savings from the transformation process.

Pavitt said in a Westminster conference: “Any idiot can cut costs but it's whether you can cut costs in a sustainable way that allows the services to still be usable."

The UK film industry contributed £4.6 billion to the economy during last year according to research published today by Oxford Economics.

The success of films including The King’s Speech, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and The Inbetweeners in both domestic and foreign markets directly contributed £1.6 billion to the UK economy, rising to £4.6 billion from merchandise and tourism.

Ivan Dunleavy, chief executive at Pinewood Shepperton, said: “We now need to look at how to enable further investment in infrastructure and how to build on the UK's growing international reputation to boost exports."

BAE Systems have warned that the failure of a merger between Airbus owners EADS and BAE would result in mass job cuts.

The warning comes from privately released reports which looked at the jobs that could be saved from the merger and the creation of a globally competitive company that would potentially secure work for both groups.

BAE has reduced its workforce in recent years as defence spending falls in a time of recession, with multiple layoffs within the UK.

The warning of job cuts will place increased pressure on the UK government to green-light the merger.

Alliance Boots are to invest £56 million in 12 percent of Nanjing Pharmaceutical, one of the largest pharmaceutical giants in the country.

The planned investment comes after Boots entered into a joint venture with Chinese pharmaceutical company Guangzhou in 2008.

Stefano Pessina, the executive chairman of Alliance Boots, said: ”In 10 years, I hope we will be one of the major players in China or we will be, together with other companies, part of one of the major players in China."

A report released by corporate financial advisors Catalyst predicted that the private health care sector can expect to see £20 billion worth of business in the next few years.

The high level of potential business comes from government efforts to reduce public sector spending and the introduction of alternate health care models.

Catalyst used examples of recent health care contracts with Virgin Care and Serco to show the direction of government policy.

The Catalyst report detailed that: "The introduction of GP commissioning and interest in healthcare models offering alternatives to hospital care will require a higher proportion of services to be delivered by the private sector. The markets for these services are estimated to be worth around £20bn."

Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, has made an offer of $7.2 billion for Singapore based consumer group Fraser and Neave (F&N).

The move to buy out the other shareholders could end Heineken’s bid to buy a 40 percent stake in F&N’s beer industry.

Charoen already controls a 30 percent stake of the business and the Heineken deal could only now succeeded if the company was able to persuade shareholders to stick by the bid.

A successful buy-out of shareholders by Charoen may see a renegotiated deal with Heineken in the future.

O2 have entered into discussions with regulator Ofcom to try and bring the auction of spectrums for 4G services forward.

The discussion with Ofcom comes after the announcement of the iPhone 5, which will only support 4G services on the EE network.

The auction for spectrums in the 2.5GHz and 800MHz would allow other phone operators to deliver 4G services in line with EE, who have employed their 1800MHz spectrum to deliver the service, ahead of O2 and other rivals.