Technology

Asia in particular has contributed to the rise in M&A activity.  A third quarter report by the Merger Market Group calculated that China accounted for 288 deals worth US$62.2-billion.  This includes a plan for Jason Jiang’s Focus Media Holding Ltd., a Shanghai display advertising firm, to list on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange by completing a reverse takeover of Hedy Holding Company in a deal valuing Focus at US$7.2-billion.  Should this backdoor listing transaction occur, it will mean Mr. Jiang and his private equity investors, notably the Carlyle Group and Fosun International Ltd., made the right decision in May 2013, when they decided to take Focus private and delist its shares from Nasdaq in one of China’s largest leveraged buyouts.  At that time, the going-private transaction valued Focus at US$3.7-billion.

Now, Google is in the midst of a corporate restructuring by forming Alphabet, Inc., an umbrella company that will include Google Inc., Google Ventures, Google Capital and Google X research lab. Google will officially become Alphabet later in 2015, but at press time, the company has not disclosed specifically when this transition will happen.

With around 134 million eSports enthusiasts worldwide and annual revenues of U.S. $612 million, professional competitive gaming is now big business. Venture capitalists, along with the children of the wealthiest billionaires in China, are investing millions of dollars into the industry, while elite players are commanding seven-figure salaries and endorsement contracts. Fortune 500 companies like American Express and Coca-Cola are sponsoring global eSports events. Peter Warman, CEO of Newzoo, an international games market research company in Amsterdam, has projected that eSports will be worth $1 billion by 2017.

The first thing you learn when looking at the Canadian tech industry is that it is not Silicon Valley.That, however doesn’t mean Canada doesn’t create successful, globally-competitive multi-billion dollar tech companies. It just means the path to get there is usually slower and quieter. Despite the spectacular failure of Nortel and to a lesser extent Corel and the more recent travails of RIM/Blackberry, Canadian tech, according to some, is actually experiencing a slight boom, building on a long history of being at the cutting edge of high tech development.