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BlackBerry Will Sell Itself For $4.7 Billion
Nerval's Lobster writes "A consortium led by financial-holding company Fairfax Financial has agreed to acquire BlackBerry for $4.7 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Fairfax Financial will acquire every BlackBerry stock-share it doesn't already own. Further details are pending, including future management structure and whether BlackBerry will continue with its stated intent to lay off thousands of employees over the next few months. 'The Special Committee is seeking the best available outcome for the Company's constituents, including for shareholders,' Barbara Stymiest, chair of BlackBerry's Board of Directors, wrote in a statement. 'Importantly, the go-shop process provides an opportunity to determine if there are alternatives superior to the present proposal from the Fairfax consortium.' A special committee formed by BlackBerry's Board of Directors had spent the past few weeks looking for a potential acquirer. BlackBerry has seen its market-share crumble as businesses and consumers embrace rivals such as Apple's iPhone and Google Android devices."
If only I could.
I wonder how long they really were shopping it around.
Fuck Ajit Pai
Layoffs? So thousands of RIM jobs are at stake?
go back to when you were private and cared about product/customer rather than investors and their growth projections.
What I am most curious about is who is part of that consortium. That will be the most telling about the future of BlackBerry.
My guess is a collection of tech companies that want to keep BlackBerry's patents out of the hands of a patent troll and thus the company will be closed down, sold off in parts, and otherwise officially killed and the patents will be shared among the consortium companies and kept safe. Because, let's be honest - BlackBerry is dead - there is nothing else of significant value remaining in the company.
RIM (and Nokia) made the biggest mistake possible by ignoring the iPhone and what it represented to the entire mobile industry. Their complacency killed the company. They changed far too little, faaaaaar too late.
(Ironically, my captcha was "overtake"...)
$4B+ should go down easy, now that Microsoft has done the deal with Nokia.
Good for them, now what? A Private Blackberry being free of the Street, do they sell-off the hardware group and focus on Enterprise services?
Regardless - it seems like a graceful way to abandon the phone wars.
In 2 years time, watch for this news headline:
"Fairfax Financial announces a $4.6 billion writedown on the value of their BlackBerry acquisition. Layoffs are proceeding. Fairfax Financial has announced plans to sell off all corporate assets including BlackBerry's patent portfolio. A buyer has not been identified at this time."
I'm kinda surprised that there's anyone that actually wants to buy RIM.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
I'll buy that for a dollar :D
... if you give me 10 years to pay it. RIM will rise again (yes, i'll change it back to RIM)! Although meaning of the short RIM will change from Research In Motion to Robots In Motion, and there will be a change in direction a bit, but the blackberry's will be there too. Oh and the HQ will move too, sorry about that.
I can only think of one reason why anyone would want to buy BlackBerry. They want full control so they can part out the companies patents and sell them off.
Everyone knows that company is dead and isn't going to make a comeback, this is a deal so Fairfax can maximize the money made from selling everything. A lost easier to streamline if there are no shareholders to get in the way.
So that it can die in peace. Blackberry's problems don't stem from it being a public company - taking it private will only shield us all from the morbid details.
Atari, Commodore, Nokia, RIM/BlackBerry.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
So just a few days after Blackberry pre-announces horrible quarterly results with a $1 Billion write down, suddenly a white knight appears to snap up the company at the post-earnings depressed stock price, for what is essentially book value. Like how Dell wasn't timid about producing horrible results while trying to take the company private for cheap. I wonder if Blackberry would have been so aggressive with their inventory write down if it didn't suit Fairfax's rationale for buying the company for nothing.
is that somebody wanted to buy Nokia
So it'll probably die, but if it ever has a chance to survive, it would be private -- otherwise every time they do something, there will be a million people saying how much they suck. The only possible way out of this mess is to get off the front page.
Comparisons between Nortel and Blackberry are unfair. Although the burst of the internet bubble contributed tremendously, the nail in Nortel's coffin was fraudulent accounting and improperly booked revenue which led to the principals being criminally charged. None of this occurred with Blackberry - BB was the victim of bad corporate decisions and management reacting too late to the iPhone and Android effect. Disappointing to the extreme, but very different from the Nortel story.
Fire everyone, chop it up into marketable parts, sell the hard assets for cash, license the IP through a troll. It's the MBA way.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
From technology leader to also ran. That's a sad thing to say from just 6 to 7 years ago when Blackberry was at the top and their shares were over $400.
This needs to go down in history as another epic fail for missed opportunities and complacent management. RIM was innovative, they pushed technology boundaries and had a rock solid platform for the enterprise. Unfortunately in a series of missteps they allowed themselves to look like fools when India and Middle Eastern countries bullied them looking for server logs and back doors by which these governments could track their citizens. Rather than erring on the side of basic human rights and telling these countries to go to hell, RIM went back and forth and depending on what articles you read either caved or gave them access to data just so they could continue to sell in those countries. So much for Security but that's only one nail in the coffin for RIM but their biggest mistake was not embracing the newer style of phones and adapting to the market. RIM could have owned this market instead of Apple but instead, RIM like so many others just let Apple move on up in terms of market share which meant that people Blackberry devices were trading them in for iPhones or Android phones.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
In all reality, this private equity firm is probably going to strip all the remaining assets from BlackBerry and kill the company, but being out of the limelight is the best thing for a company in this situation to do.
When a company is publicly traded, you can _maybe_ get it to agree to changes that pay off in 1 or 2 quarters. The stock analysts and CNBC idiots make it so that every time the CEO goes to the bathroom is scrutinized for any shred of news. Anything beyond that 2-quarter limit just can't be done. Anything that involves tough decisions that affect share price can't be done either. BlackBerry needs that kind of time out of the public eye to fix the problems they have. It's too bad also -- because we're stuck in the position of having our retirements dependent on the fickle stock market (those of us without pensions, that is.) I think that if the stock market went back to being a rich man's club, and we didn't have entire news organizations waiting to pounce on every utterance that company executives make, the funding picture for companies would be much better. Look at how much negative press BlackBerry has endured -- no matter what they do, every news outlet says "they suck." Gee, why can't we keep the share price up? Why isn't anyone ignoring the advice and investing?
I echo the sentiments of others in this thread though -- Microsoft would be stupid to not buy the patents they have, and they could even fold the secure messaging stuff into Exchange.
This is an escape from the American press (at the individual level) and people. It's probably too late, however.
It is clear that on virtually all topics vocal Americans - likely applies to every culture but the Americans hold disproportionate economic sway - are trapped in religious level reasoning even when discussing science and technology. Sometimes the explanation is cognitive dissonance rooting a belief or nationalism. I have often wondered whether the American press was on this three to five year non-stop feeding frenzy because of nationalism associated with Apple & Google. We will never know because 'the people' never hold the press or government to task. No matter, discussions and analyses on any topic is guaranteed to die on platforms like Slashdot.
Incidentally, I don't own any cell phone.
Nortel?
Another of Canada's former world leading tech giants bites the dust. I wonder what would have happened if RIM hadn't been blocked from buying Nortel assets. Would they have been diversified enough to weather this storm, or would RIM/BB have still cratered themselves.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Is it just me, or is this somewhat fishy? First, the company posts an almost billion-dollar loss on Friday then botches the BBM to iOS/Android rollout. And then once the share price is driven down to almost $8, sells itself for $9 / share.
And of course there is this: http://www.thestar.com/business/2013/08/16/blackberry_ceo_thorsten_heins_could_get_556_million_if_ousted_after_sale.html
corporations are amoral, yo.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Maybe you're right. However I wouldn't underestimate Prem Watsa - widely considered the "Warren Buffet of Canada", or Fairfax who have delivered a 25% annual growth in book value for the past 25 years. You don't accomplish that making foolish investments.
BNN is reporting this as meaning NO tech companies are involved in the buyout.
Sounds to me like Fairfax and Blackberry negotiated a back-room deal where Blackberry would announce massive layoffs and a $1B writedown to tank the share value, paving the way for Fairfax to acquire the company at a fraction of the cost. How is that legal? Companies don't make acquisition decisions overnight, so they have been planning this for a while...
They also can't have sex.
You should credit Winston Churchill for that joke.
You have the wrong Winston ;-) Its actually Oscar Wilde
"You should credit Winston Churchill for that joke." -- Abraham Lincoln
So RIM are worth almost as much as Nokia? Really??
There are some interesting possibilities with BlackBerry. I can imagine lots of small profitable business that one can get out of it. I don't see any reason it needs to die, it just needs to accept that it isn't going to be going toe-to-toe with Google or Apple anymore.
Maybe not. But Blackberry has been saying for 2 years they wanted a buyer and legitimately their strategy kinda sucked. I think you are right about the timing but there is no major conspiracy here.
"Fairfax Financial will acquire every BlackBerry stock-share it doesn't already own". How Fairfax buy all the stock-share that other people own?
When a technology company starts, its usually by 1, 2 or a small group of engineers or engineer types. If their ideas are sound, they work hard, and have a bit of luck, they grow the company to an incredible size. At some point, either they get too old to run it, or faces some kind of hardship like competition or a changing market. Then the company switches from Stage 1, to Stage 2. The initial owners are forced out or they retire, and a professional management company (non-engineers) try to take over and either 'manage' the company, or 'fix' the company. In reality, they have no idea what to do with the company, but usually take the company apart and sell it to people who want all of it or pieces of it. At Stage 2, design engineers are no longer required. ... I was hoping a technology company would buy them and actually do something with them. Now they will be cut into pieces and sold off. Either way, they are done like dishes.
Examples:
Hewlett Packard
Sun Microsystems
Research In Motion (RIM) a.k.a. Blackberry