Atos May Acquire Gemalto to Create Global Leader in Cybersecurity, Digital Tech

Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, announces that it has made a formal proposal to acquire Gemalto [Euronext Amsterdam: GTO] by way of a public offer for all of Gemalto issued and outstanding shares. Atos invited Gemalto’s Board of Directors to engage discussions and review collaboratively this potential transaction. On November 28, 2017, Atos has delivered an offer to the Board of Directors of Gemalto which is friendly, compelling, and which addresses the interests of all stakeholders. Since then, Atos has reiterated its friendly intentions. Considering increased risk that could impact Gemalto’s shares, and for the purposes of market information, the Atos’ Board of Directors has decided to make its proposal public while affirming its willingness to engage into discussions with the objective to come to a transaction recommended by the Gemalto’s Board of Directors.

Key terms of the Atos proposal:

•       Intended all-cash offer of €46.0 per Gemalto share (cum dividend), representing a total consideration of approximately €4.3bn.

•       A premium of c. 42% to Gemalto’s last unaffected closing price as of December 8, 2017, and c. 42% and c. 34% premium to Gemalto’s 1-month and 3-month volume weighted average trading prices, respectively.

•       The proposed transaction will strengthen Gemalto’s businesses and will create a leading Group in cybersecurity technologies and digital services to the benefit of all stakeholders going forward.

•       The acquisition of Gemalto shares will be entirely financed with Atos’ existing cash resources and fully committed external debt.

Thierry Breton, Chairman and CEO of Atos said: “Atos has been following closely, and with a lot of interest, the evolution of Gemalto as a leading player in digital cyber security, IoT and payment and has long admired its global presence and strong customer and technology portfolios. We believe that a combination of Atos and Gemalto would result in enhanced global leadership in cybersecurity, digital technologies and services and in the strengthening of our positioning as a leading European payment services provider. Atos has carefully considered the interest of the stakeholders of the two groups, shareholders, employees, and customers which will all benefit from the proposed friendly transaction. In addition, Atos comes forward with a long track-record of successfully integrating management teams, employees and businesses”

A powerful industrial combination in three high-growth markets

Strategically, the combination of Atos and Gemalto will lead to enhanced global leadership in cybersecurity and digital technologies and services, with highly complementary offerings, technologies, and commercial footprint:

•       Reinforced capabilities in digital cyber technologies and services and homeland security: the combination will lead to the creation of a worldwide leader with total revenue amounting to  c. €1.5bn. Gemalto’s offerings in identity and access management, data encryption and crypto management strongly complement Atos’ capabilities in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, High Performance Computers, and cloud orchestration.

•       Enhanced capabilities in IoT/M2M by leveraging Atos’ Codex data analytics and AI, deep industry knowledge and long-standing customer relationships, with c. €1bn in combined revenue.

•       Consolidation of the Group position as a leading end-to-end European payment services provider: as a global leader with approximately €1bn in revenues in 2016, Gemalto has gained unique and deep expertise in payment solutions. The synergies between Worldline, Gemalto, and Atos businesses will benefit from end-to-end capabilities across the value chain and many substantial geographic, technology and services complementarities.

The combination will reinforce the two groups in Europe as well as in the United States of America, first market for the two companies and where the new group will be a key player in term of investments and jobs creation.

Strong fit in the interest of both Atos and Gemalto stakeholders

Atos and Gemalto have long shared a common DNA, which is expected to serve as a strong foundation for bringing the two companies together. Both groups have a long-standing heritage of technological and scientific excellence. Both are client-centric organizations, relentlessly focusing on customer needs and satisfaction. Atos and Gemalto both put enormous emphasis on attracting, developing and retaining the very best talent, in an increasingly competitive and global environment. Finally, Atos and Gemalto share a long-standing experience in cybersecurity for its clients in both private and public sectors.

Atos has demonstrated in the past its integration capabilities, in particular with the successful integration of the 33,000 employees of the Siemens Information Systems, the 9,300 employees of Bull and the 9,600 employees of Xerox ITO, transactions which have been beneficial to all stakeholders involved. The integration methodology of Atos will notably entail – with due respect to the social dialogue framework of both companies – to:

•       Immediately and fully mobilize the employee base of the two groups in order to sustain the continuity of operations and develop a shared strategic vision in key markets that Gemalto is operating in;

•       Welcome Gemalto’s employees as soon as the proposed transaction is completed and foster a joint culture of technological and scientific excellence, teamwork, and shared pride in being part of a strengthened global group ideally positioned to face future market challenges;

•       Open up new opportunities for Gemalto’s employees by allowing them to participate fully in the various programs of the Atos Group.

It is key for Atos to retain Gemalto’s talents within the combined group. With the cooperation of Gemalto’s management, Atos is very confident in its ability to implement a smooth and successful integration of Gemalto’s employees. By way of background, Atos hires more than 10,000 engineers annually, and has obtained multiple awards as a great place to work across countries. Atos will obviously respect all the existing employment terms of the employees of Gemalto.

Regarding Gemalto’s clients, Atos believes the combination will greatly enhance the breadth and depth of existing commercial relationships. Clients will obviously benefit from continued and relentless focus on their needs, but also from a broader set of capabilities contributed by Atos (e.g. holistic approach in digital security, deep industry expertise in IoT/M2M, positioning across the full payments value chain, new technology expertise in AI, Big Data, High Performance Computing, cloud orchestration) but also from the increased scale and stability of the combined group.

Significant value for Gemalto’s shareholders

Atos believes this proposal presents an opportunity for Gemalto’s shareholders to realize extraordinary value for their shares in Gemalto. It provides them with a premium valuation and the opportunity to receive substantial and immediate cash consideration. The proposed offer price represents a premium of  c. 42% to Gemalto’s last unaffected closing price as of December 8, 2017, and c. 42% and c. 34% premium to Gemalto’s 1-month and 3-month volume weighted average trading prices, respectively.

Strong financial capability

Atos has strong financial capabilities and intends to finance the all-cash offer using existing cash resources and fully committed external debt. For this purpose, Atos has secured financing for the transaction with two major international banks which have agreed to underwrite the full amount of the offer. The financing package including the credit agreement is all agreed in final form and actionable. Moreover, the leverage contemplated after completion of the proposed transaction will preserve financial firepower for the combined group to expand further and participate in future steps of industry consolidation.

Commitments to R&D effort and Gemalto’s brand

Preservation of Gemalto’s strong R&D capabilities and skills is also key to Atos, consistent with its culture of technological and scientific excellence. By joining forces, the two groups will benefit from increased scale and relevance and create a formidable innovation powerhouse, notably by capitalizing on the adjacencies between digital security, payments, machine learning and quantum computing.

Atos will also expect the combined group to capitalize on Gemalto’s recognized brand, viewed as a strong asset.

Management

Atos appreciates the achievements of Gemalto’s management team, in particular in transitioning its business model. Atos expects key executives to remain involved and help drive the combined group’s strong ambition, in the same way Atos successfully included Siemens’, Bull’s and Xerox ITO’s key people in its development.

* * *

Atos, in conjunction with its financial and legal advisors, has devoted significant time and resources to analyzing a potential combination with Gemalto and is confident in its ability to execute and complete the proposed transaction and to swiftly obtain all necessary regulatory approvals, in particular for anti-trust regulation which has already been deeply assessed.

Atos has submitted a friendly proposal to Gemalto to combine their respective businesses by way of an allcash public offer for all issued and outstanding ordinary shares of Gemalto. The proposed offer will be subject to pre-offer and offer conditions customary for transactions of this nature, including but not limited to a minimum acceptance level and required regulatory clearances. Atos will determine and confirm the conditions to the offer in accordance with applicable laws in the Netherlands and in France.

Atos will file its offer with the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (Autoriteit Financiële Markten, AFM) and wishes to move swiftly with the negotiation of a merger agreement, with a view to come to a recommended transaction. Atos expects such merger agreement to be customary for transactions of this nature, including in particular with respect to non-financial covenants relating to employees, integration and strategy.

No agreement has been reached and there can be no assurances that any transaction will result from this proposal. Any offer will be made only by means of an offer memorandum, approved by the AFM. Atos will make further announcements if and when appropriate.

Winners of Infosys Finacle Client Innovation Awards 2017 Announced

Infosys Finacle, part of EdgeVerve Systems, a product subsidiary of Infosys has announced the winners of the Infosys Finacle Client Innovation Awards for 2017. In its fourth year, the awards recognize banks that deliver breakthrough innovations in banking products, customer service, process design and distribution channels capitalizing on Finacle solutions.

Over 160 nominations were received across eight categories such as Product Innovation, Channel Innovation, Customer Service Innovation, Process Innovation, Innovative Custom Components, Project Management, API based Innovation and Emerging Technologies-led Innovation. The nominations were evaluated on the following three criteria – degree of innovativeness (35% weightage), benefits reaped (40% weightage), and complexity of the initiative (25% weightage).

Commenting on the awards, Sanat Rao, Chief Business Officer and Global Head of Infosys Finacle, said, “Digitization, coupled with the influx of new players, is leading the emergence of new business models and accelerating the pace of innovation across the banking industry. In its fourth year, the Infosys Finacle Client Innovation awards program recognizes the innovations by our clients, in developing differentiated products and delivering a world class experience to their customers. It is heartening to see the Finacle suite of solutions lending itself well to our clients’ aspirations to reimagine banking and cement their primacy in their customers’ financial ecosystem.”

List of awardees and initiatives:

PRODUCT INNOVATION
Large Bank	Winners – Emirates NBD for ‘Liv: first lifestyle digital bank in UAE for millennial’ Winners – Bancolombia for their digital banking platform ‘Nequi: Highly Commended – ICICI Bank for ‘Government Internet Banking (GIB)’, ‘Samsung Pay’ and ‘Truecaller Pay’ Highly Commended – Bank Muscat for ‘bm Wallet’
Mid-size Bank	Winners – Wema Bank for ‘ALAT by Wema, a fully digital bank’
Small Bank	Winners – Société Générale for ‘Advanced global trade finance operations’ Highly Commended – MauBank for ‘Cardless Transactions’
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES LED INNOVATION
Large Bank	Winners – ICICI Bank for ‘Automation of trade finance and remittances leveraging blockchain’ ‘Robotic Process Automation’ and ‘CHATBOT Services’ Winners – Emirates NBD for ‘Automation of trade finance and remittances leveraging blockchain’
Mid-size Bank	Winner – Bank Sohar for ‘Insights driven banking’ Highly Commended – Hatton National Bank for ‘HNB Fitness App’
Small Bank	Winners – Nations Trust Bank for ‘FriMi – Sri Lanka’s first digital bank’ Highly Commended – The Industrial Bank of Kuwait ‘ Hyper converged virtualized solution
API BASED INNOVATION
Large Bank	Winners – ICICI Bank for ‘Automated Advisory Platform’, ‘API led business partnerships’, ‘’Day to day real-time process automation’ Highly Commended – Union Bank of the Philippines for ‘Rafa, the banking chatbot’
Mid-size Bank	Winners – IndusInd Bank for ‘Instant account opening leveraging APIs’
Small Bank	Winners – RBL Bank for ‘API based trade finance solution for corporates’ Highly Commended – PMC Bank for ‘Hot Marking ATM/Debit Card Using Mobile Banking App’
INNOVATIVE CUSTOM COMPONENTS
Large Bank	Winners – Standard Bank for ‘Offering value added services on channels’ Highly Commended – Stanbic IBTC Bank for ‘Developing a centralized pricing architecture’
Mid-size Bank	Winners – IndusInd Bank for ‘Genlimo service - parallel processing of transactions Highly Commended – Fidelity Bank for ‘Teller Enhancements
Small Bank	Winners – Cosmos Cooperative Bank ‘Custom components for enhanced operational efficiency’
CHANNELS INNOVATION
Large Bank	Winners – ICICI Bank for ‘Insta banking integration’ Highly Commended – Equity Bank for ‘Eazzynet EquiLoan – a paperless loan processing platform’ Highly Commended – Standard Bank ‘Instant Money’
Mid-size Bank	Winners – RAKBANK for ‘Convergence project: building a digital banking platform’ Winners – Kotak Mahindra Bank for ‘Digital account opening’ Winners – Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank for ‘Building a digital banking experience’ Highly Commended – Housing Bank for Trade and Finance for ‘International remittances on mobile app’
INNOVATION IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Large Bank	Winners – DBS Bank for ‘Core transformation for Hong Kong Operations’ Highly Commended – Standard Bank for ‘Golden Eye’ project, ‘Africa core banking and digital channels transformation’
Mid-size Bank	Winners – UCO Bank for ‘Anybody can code’ program Highly Commended – Bank Sohar for ‘Digital Banking Transformation’
PROCESS INNOVATION
Large Bank	Winners – United Bank for Africa for ‘Teller process optimization’ Highly Commended – Union National Bank for ‘Automating limit monitoring process’
Mid-size Bank	Winners – Kotak Bank for ‘Cash Management System Platform’ and ‘DIGI service requests automation’ Winners – The Federal Bank for ‘Instant Account Opening’ Highly Commended – Andhra Bank for ‘Optimizing credit card issuance process Highly Commended – Bank Dhofar for ‘Driving Business Excellence through Lean Six Sigma’
Small Bank	Winners – Golomt Bank for ‘Delivering brilliant omnichannel experiences’
CUSTOMER SERVICE INNOVATION
Large Bank	Winners – Axis Bank for ‘Providing class leading customer experience with advanced wealth management offering” Winners – Union Bank of India for ‘Re-engineering customer service’ Highly Commended – United Bank for Africa for ‘Email Moni’
Small Bank	Winners – Asia Green Development Bank for ‘AGD Pay’ Winners – Cosmos Cooperative Bank for ‘TABBANC MicroATM

Low Adoption of Industrial Cyber Security Measures: Honeywell Survey

Honeywell has released a new study showing industrial companies are not moving quickly to adopt cyber security measures to protect their data and operations, even as attacks have increased around the globe.

The survey – Putting Industrial Cyber Security at the Top of the CEO Agenda – was conducted by LNS Research and sponsored by Honeywell. It polled 130 strategic decision makers from industrial companies about their approach to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and their use of industrial cyber security technologies and practices. Among the findings were:

·         More than half of respondents reported working in an industrial facility that already has had a cyber-security breach.

·         45% of the responding companies still do not have an accountable enterprise leader for cyber security.

·         Only 37% are monitoring for suspicious behavior.

·         Although many companies are conducting regular risk assessments, 20% are not doing them at all.

“Decision makers are more aware of threats and some progress has been made to address them, but this report reinforces that cyber security fundamentals haven’t been adopted by a significant portion of the industrial community,” said Jeff Zindel, vice president and general manager, Honeywell Industrial Cyber Security. “In order to take advantage of the tremendous benefits of industrial digital transformation and IIoT, companies must improve their cyber security defenses and adapt to the heightened threat landscape now.”

The study suggests these three immediate actions for any industrial organization to capture the value of the new technologies:

1.    Making industrial cyber security part of digital transformation strategies;

2.    Driving best practice adoption across people, processes and technology, from access controls to risk monitoring, and tap external cyber expertise to fill gaps

3.    Focusing on empowering leaders and building an organizational structure that breaks down the silos between IT and OT.

“Cyber security needs to be part of every CEO’s agenda to ensure the effective, immediate and long-term deployment of strategies and technologies such as IIoT,” said Matthew Littlefield, president and principal analyst, LNS Research. “In short, in order for a business to succeed on its digital transformation journey, it needs to succeed with industrial cyber security.”

LNS Research is a global leader in research and advisory for digital transformation of industry, delivering technology insights for business executives. Its analysts focus on identifying the metrics, leadership, business process, and technology capabilities effecting change.

            Honeywell’s industrial cyber security technologies and expertise address many of the issues identified in the LNS Research study.

GE’s Sustainable Technology Helps Revive Bengaluru’s Clogged Kundalahalli Lake

General Electric (GE) has restored the clogged Kundalahalli lake in the city’s south-east suburb with the help of an NGO (United Way Bengaluru), the American multinational said on Wednesday.

“A new lease of life has been given to the lake at Whitefield with clean water after removing its pollutants through sewage treatment plant set up on its banks,” GE India Technology Centre’s Chief Executive Munesh Makhija said in a statement here.

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) partnered with GE and the non-governmental organisation to revive the lake, upkeep environment and create a cleaner and greener community.

“The treated water replenishes the lake. Our volunteer teams found that it (lake) had many inlets that allowed sewage to seep into it, forming silt and reducing its storage capacity by almost half.

The garbage pile-up had detrimental effect on the lake spread over 30 acres, environment and area people. Its restoration has increased water level by six inches in six months and helped flora and fauna florish, Makhija said.

The civic body (BBMP) will invest in cleaning, maintaining and fencing surrounding the lake.

GE and United Way have also built six eco-friendly toilets, including one for differently abled to prevent open defecation near the lake and maintain cleaner environment.

“We will maintain the lake for two years and plant 5,000 saplings in surrounding area,” United Way Chief Executive Manish Michael said.

As part of its ‘Wake the lake’ campaign, the NGO is working to restore/revive 15 other lakes across the city with the help of corporates like GE.

Netcore Solutions Forays into $2.03 Billion Indian Marketing & Customer Analytics Segment

Netcore Solutions, a leading marketing technology solutions provider has announced its foray into the marketing analytics and customer analytics segment.

Netcore Solutions is now the only Indian company to provide an integrated solution that combines customer analytics, cross-channel marketing automation and marketing analytics. With this strategic decision, Netcore Solution predicts to gain 15% YoY growth in the order book which will give a good fillip to overall revenue in the next five years.The Indian marketing analytics industry’s present annual revenue is pegged to be around $2.03 billion and it is predicted to grow at a healthy CAGR of 23.8% till 2020.

While companies in India have shown a keen interest in adopting marketing analytics to make informed, data-driven decisions and effectively reach out to the target customers, the concept is still at a nascent stage. The market is largely serviced by the ‘pure play’ analytics companies. This has resulted in a vacuum whereby marketers were unable to get a unified view of the customer as multiple vendors would handle each marketing channels, which mostly resulted in data lying in silos.

With its intuitive solution and a team of analytics experts, Netcore’s smart and easy to deploy solution will empower marketers and analysts with the insights they need to make every customer interaction smarter. Netcore marketing data integration services will bring together relevant customer data and on top of it build summary data attributes to deliver a clever customer data mart which is necessary for a seamless and effective data driven marketing campaign.

Using analytics and customer data mart, marketers will be able to identify most profitable customers, most frequent customers, most responding customers as well as preferred products, channel of communication and much more. Different attributes attached to each engagement will allow marketers to closely analyse customer behaviour across every point of interaction. Consequently, this will have huge impact on the cost of acquiring customers, improve retention rates, and reduce customer churn.

Elaborating on the decision to diversify into analytics segment, Kalpit Jain, CEO, Netcore Solutions said, “India is currently witnessing a trend of ‘parallelism’ in consumer behaviour. Consumers today have multiple personalities depending on the time, place and platform they interact with a brand. The attention span and turnaround time are also shorter than ever before. Therefore, a holistic outlook of the customer – encompassing insights on customer demographics, digital activity, transactional data, key customer attributes, and behavioural data – is imperative for the brands to improve RoI as well as reduce customer acquisition and retention costs. With this strategic move, we will offer marketers the capability to marry expertise of our intuitive marketing automation platform (Netcore Smartech) with intelligent customer and marketing insights derived through this analytics service.”

In terms of sectors, presently, BFSI is the biggest adopter of analytics services in India. Of the total revenue earned by analytics industry in India, 37% of the total amounting to $756 million in revenues is contributed by the sector. This is a 31 per cent increase compared to last year. 

While Netcore has already started providing services to some of the key companies from the BFSI segment in India, it plans to roll out the analytics service in a phased manner to Malaysia, Singapore, and Nigeria where it has a strong presence in the marketing automation space.

Analytics important, say Indian CMOs

The Indian CMOs’ search for adding analytical capabilities along with the implementation of a full stack marketing automation solution was also highlighted in the first-of-its-kind B2C Marketing Automation Report India, 2017 launched by Research NXT and Netcore Solutions.

The report highlighted that about 29% of marketers believe that it is important to have the right marketing mix in order to gain better customer lifetime value.  In addition, 28% of marketers were considering using analytics, while 18% had already included analytics at the core of its marketing strategy.

The report also emphasized that analytics is going to play an important role in automating and improving customer engagement. This, in turn, is going to help the marketers get a better conversion rate optimization by enabling brands to engage in a personalized manner with their customers, leading to increased Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

Rankings Not Destination, Is a Journey for Us, Says MAHE VC

Manipal: Rankings for Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) is not a destination. It is a journey. The improvement that we do in the rankings year after year, talks not only about what we have done better, but also talks about what we have done better in comparison with other universities. That’s what ranking is all about,” said MAHE Vice Chancellor, Dr H. Vinod Bhat while addressing media persons about the deemed to be university’s rankings this year at Manipal.

In his briefing, Dr Bhat spoke about the various aspects of rankings and how MAHE has been working on the different parameters. “It is a healthy competition among universities. And I am proud to say that our university is in the top one to two percentile of all universities across the world. This is the result of the hard work put in by the officials of the university, leadership, faculty and students in the last seven or eight years. So we are seeing the results now,” he said

“World rankings are being done by different agencies. QS is one, Times Higher Education is another and Shanghai yet another. We go with QS and Times Higher Education because these two are the most widely accepted ranking agencies in the world”.

He added; “The recent QS rankings, first the World in June, then Asia and followed by BRICS has not come as a surprise to me. We are the highest ranked private Indian university in the QS World Rankings, in the 701-750 band, and there is no other private Indian university better than that”.

Giving details of the rankings, Dr Sandeep Shenoy, Director Quality and Compliance also Head Department of Commerce, MAHE said, “The University has moved up two places to 198 in the Quacquarelli Symonds University Rankings, Asia Region’s 2018 edition. In the domestic ranking, the University is placed 16th overall and third among the private Universities.

Elaborating he said, “This is the ninth edition of this ranking and the largest yet, featuring 400 institutions from 17 countries. Over 600 institutions across the continent were evaluated and 450 provisionally ranked. Of them, 400 were included in the published tables. In this edition, the University performed among the top 47% in the QS Asia University Rankings. Considering there are approximately 11,900 Universities regionally, MAHE is one of the top 1.7% universities in Asia. The Faculty Student indicator, with a rank of 86 in the region, is the strongest parameter for MAHE.

“As for the 2018 QS BRICS Region University Rankings, MAHE performed in the 119= rank range, which is among the top 31% in the QS BRICS Region University Rankings. Considering there are approximately 9,000 universities regionally, this makes MAHE one of the top 1.3% universities in BRICS. MAHE is placed second among private universities ranked in India,” Dr Sandeep said.

The key indicators for the methodology used for the BRICS ranking are; Academic Reputation, Employer Reputation, and Faculty to Student Ratio, staff with PhD, Citations per paper, international faculty and international students. Also present at the media briefing were MAHE Registrar, Dr Narayan Sabhahit and Dr Director, Quality and Compliance, Dr Christopher Sudhakar.