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BlackBerry Abandons Sale Plans, Will Replace CEO
An anonymous reader writes "BlackBerry has abandoned plans to sell the company to Fairfax Holdings after the shareholder could not raise enough money. CEO Thorsten Heins is to leave the company. From the article: 'The company also said that Prem Watsa, chairman and CEO of Fairfax, will be appointed Lead Director and chair of the compensation, nomination and governance committee. Mr. Watsa had resigned from the BlackBerry board earlier this year to explore a bid for the company.'"
Back on it's way to catch up to Windows phone sales! Then Apple and Android next. Everyone buy stock now now now!
Blackberry/RIM has been a truly classic example of the blind _and_ stupid leading the poor unfortunate employees who haven't jumped ship yet...
If they think putting themselves on the market and then pulling themselves from the market hasn't hurt their already brutalized image and reputation then they are truly clueless. Blackberry is dead. How much more good money are they going to throw down the toilet?...
nt
That's like selling stock because of bad management.
semicolons are awesome! especially in headlines. The Onion does it well.
Maybe. They are pumping a billion dollars into the company. Less than the 2 to 3 billion the buyout would have pumped in but still a large amount.
Then thing about fight or flight.
Selling stock is like voting with your feet. That’s fleeing.
Buy the company and changing the management. That’s fighting. Not a choice for many small investors. The new management might have some brilliant ideas. Or maybe they will just shut down the company and sell the company in chunks. I understand it has a lot of patents.
Summary: "BlackBerry has abandoned plans to sell the company to Fairfax Holdings after the shareholder could not raise enough money."
Article: "In an interview, Mr. Watsa denied reports that Fairfax struggled to raise financing for the $4.7 billion deal. 'Over the history of Fairfax, we've never had a problem lining up financing,' he said. 'There was no question of us being able to raise money. After the due diligence period we didn't think was appropriate for [BlackBerry] to be burdened with debt.'"
Maybe the AC knows something it's not sharing?
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
So BlackBerry has plans to sell abandons, and those plans will replace the CEO?
Nothing smells like failure like failing to execute. They're in such disarray they can't even follow through on a plan to close shop and sell out.
It's almost as if the morons who created the Blackberry storm are running the company.. Oh wait.
With all the NSA stuff going around, Blackberry could market themselves as a phone with complete privacy for your texts. Make a few commercials with people using Android / Apple, and then cut to the NSA reading your text messages and laughing.
Every time I hear news about Blackberry I hear that gurgling sound the loo makes when it gets a bit too full of water; not sure if it's slowly going down or slowly coming up.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Dupe
It looks like Fairfax wasn't able to come up with a DVD full of dollars ($4,700,372,992) to buy the company, but fortunately Blackberry was able to sell the CEO to an unnamed bidder for one billion.
(By the way, Thorsten? Just thought you should know. It's a cook book. Enjoy your trip.)
"They are pumping a billion dollars into the company. Less than the 2 to 3 billion the buyout would have pumped in but still a large amount."
Apple made 10 billion in deferred profits last quarter. DEFERRED profits.
A billion is *not* enough.
It's not as bad as some NBC news articles. But, editors, this isn't the standard to float above.
Oh, piss off. The problem is always the people, regardless of the form of government. If you want communism, find same-minded people and start a co-operative. The advantage of a co-operative vs a communist system of government is that if the leader sucks, people can jump ship and form a new co-operative without the need of a revolution or of shooting the leader, adding to efficiency. And it can work within the capitalist system from day one!
Captcha: forties. What happened in the forties, and where (US I presume), that relates to this? :)
Random capitalization. No punctuation. 10 year olds could do better.
RIMJobber1: What's that flushing sound?
RIMJobber2: Why's there swirly blue water all over the place?
RIM: RUH ROH RAGGY!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There was no serious bidder for the company. Fairfax's bid was a sham. And the other companies who have been reported to show interest were actually asked by BlackBerry to meet with them and the companies did so only out of courtesy (http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/11/04/blackberry-buyout-was-always-a-joke).
BBM isn't worth X billion. Not anymore.
Patents anyone?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...but good luck finding another sucker willing to take his place. The USS Blackberry has been sinking for a long time now. Nothing and nobody is going to save it. Whoever takes the helm at this point will preside over the dissolution of the company, not its revival.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Google could have all those Blackberry patents for the next salvo in the war.
will me copy of Blackberry Enterprise Server still wok?
should get a chance to be CEO of BlackBerry
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
A billion is *not* enough.
To do what? Don’t leave me hanging. At this point we are comparing apples to berries.
On one hand we are talking about paid in capital. I will point out that Apple only has 20b (plus retain earnings).
On the other hand we are talking about 10b in profits for a large company that is involved in phones, tables, computers, software, etc. verse a medium sized focused company. That indicates that Apple is well run not that 1b could not be wisely spent. I will also point out that when Steve Jobs was hired on the second time Apple’s profits were minuscule compare to Microsoft, Dell, or Intel.
At this point, is anyone under the impression that BlackBerry has a viable business plan? It seems to me that their best option would be to liquidate; get what they can for BlackBerry's IP and the remnants of the BES service, and distribute the remaining cash to shareholders. The device business is a wounded and dying animal that at this point is just good money after bad.
There's nothing inherently wrong with BB X, but it was too little, too late, and doesn't present anything that iOS and Android couldn't add in a jiffy if they wanted to.
Blackberry is the laughing stock of companies in ontario, it's a serious face palm to think they're yet again going to try and save one of the biggest failures in Canadian history. This company has been run into the ground by three different CEO's and now a fourth will try and show us how it's done. Blackberry is not a viable phone company, they have crappy, buggy software, out of date and poorly styled hardware and just a lack of innovation at every level. Lets see one more time how bad Blackberry can fail, I'm waiting to hear about the next round of layoff's, of course anyone working for the tech joke who didn't see this coming years ago deserves it, as a coop student I could see it coming like a steam roller, hence why I didn't sign a full time deal with them.
Blackberries have always been a local feature to North America. If they really had been good then they would have sold well elsewhere too.
Apple did show how to make a touch-phone that sells, but now everyone else has caught up and Android is a lot more developer-friendly so there are more apps showing up there all the time. Blackberry and Windows Phone/Mobile/CE/Whatever are left behind and will have a hard time to catch up if they ever do. Phones today need not only to exist but also have a good and friendly environment for developers and users.
I have a feeling that the peak of phone evolution has been reached and what we see now is just minor tweaks and improvements. Profit margins are about as good as on cars - next to nothing. What contributes to profit is the aftermarket stuff.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Thank you so much BlackBerry team, I was waiting for this sale. It's really great, user friendly and smooth.
BB was never going to make it as Just Another Android Handset Maker if they had tried; that requires a very different corporate culture and organization from one that tries to create something very different.
If they had started (and finished) BB about two or three years earlier, it might have had a chance, but they spent too much time thinking iOS and Android were "consumer toys" and not worthy of their attention.