Tuesday 24 September 2013
Blackberry gets offer to sell to Fairfax Financial for just $4.7 billion.
Well it has just about happened. Blackberry has announced it's accepted
a $4.7 billion offer from Fairfax Financial Holdings for itself, about a
month after the company's board announced it was considering a sale.
Fairfax, which already had a 10 percent stake in the BlackBerry's
shares, will pay $9 per share in the former smartphone giant, adding up
to the aforementioned $4.7 billion. Under Fairfax, BlackBerry will be a
private company, as it had been considering last month. BlackBerry is signing a letter of intent to confirm the preliminary deal. While, Fairfax hasn't announced what it plans on doing with BlackBerry
once the deal is completed, Chairman and CEO Prem Watsa served up some
optimism.
"We believe this transaction will open an exciting new private chapter
for BlackBerry, its customers, carriers and employees," he stated. "We
can deliver immediate value to shareholders, while we continue the
execution of a long-term strategy in a private company with a focus on
delivering superior and secure enterprise solutions to BlackBerry
customers around the world."
It’s a tough time for Blackberry, with the company having to lay off 4,500 employees following a poor Q2 2013. Sales, or the lack thereof, of the Blackberry Q10 and Z10 were to blame, with the two smartphones positioned as the two captains set to right the ship.
Fairfax isn’t particularly well-known for tech investments, with the company making the bulk of its bank on insurance endeavors. That has us wondering about the future of Blackberry as we know it. The aforementioned statement by Watsa doesn’t make it sound like they’ll be auctioning off separate pieces of the Blackberry business to highest bidders, but that very well could happen.
~ Atul Purohit |Saral Joshi
Saral Joshi © 2013 All Rights Reserved.
