“After a disastrous year at Research in Motion Ltd., Wall Street and a wide swath of corporate Canada are now asking: Where’s the board?” Will Connors reports for The Wall Street Journal. “RIM shares hit a series of multiyear lows after warning on Dec. 15 its new BlackBerry won’t be out until later next year. Its current line isn’t selling well in the U.S., as Apple Inc.’s iPhone and other competitors gobble up market share.”
Connors reports, “Once Canada’s biggest company by market capitalization, RIM has shed about $30 billion in value so far this year. It’s now worth just over $7 billion, less than that other Canadian icon, coffee and doughnut chain Tim Hortons Inc. Amid the carnage, a growing chorus of investors and analysts are calling for RIM’s independent directors to take firmer control of the company, either by forcing a big strategic shift, selling the company or ousting co-Chief Executives Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who also serve as co-chairmen.”
Connors reports, “According to a person familiar with the matter… The two co-CEOs also have long prevented other executives at RIM from accessing the board, or from gaining insight into what goes on at board meetings, according to another person close to the company.””
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Alternate headline: Two fools in one-trick pony costume run roughshod over RIM BoD.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
I wouldn’t change a thing. Balsillie & Lazaridis – for as long as it takes. (These guys should have been booted out a couple years ago if they expected anything other than FAIL.)
A SAMN analysis of RIM a year ago easily predicts the ongoing train wreck.
While some of it may be cultural (Canadiens may simply be too nice to run this kind of company), there were more than enough universal PEPR measures for investors to notice.
“Canadiens may simply be too nice to run this kind of company”
Oh no, we have scum up here too. For just one example – our tin-pot dictator “prime minister”, Stephen Hitler, whose fond ambition is to remake Canada into a more polite version of an amalgam of Bush and Fox News ideals.
Shamus is a little too modest to admit it, but, there are even worse scum in Canada: He has only to look into the mirror. Actually, he would fit right in with the ‘occupy’ trash heap of (in)humanity.
Is there no beginning to their talent?
=:~)
WhoDuhThought?
The questions regarding the BoD have been raised by me and others. If the shareholders are so stupid to reelect the same losers, the shareholders have no one to blame.
Someone is guilty of managerial malfeasance & misgovernance.
The co-CEOs have a major chunk of the stock. Add in a few buddies who are also big shareholders, and you control the election.
@Seamus
Trudeau is spinning in his grave; smoke is coming out.
The difference between RIM and Tim Horton’s is the Horton’s is successful and growing in the US. (or at least on the beachhead in upstate NY.)
That, and Horton’s products are tastier!
I just want to know which one of them is in the front half of the costume, and which in the back.
Heh. Steve Jobs famously had his way with the Apple board, too. The difference was, Steve was a brilliant man who really knew what he was doing, so for the board to just sit back and let him do what he wanted was a wise move. For these two clowns, not so much.
——RM
“co-CEOs,” “co-Chairmen of the Board,” next up: co-conspirators. They get their golden parachutes while the rest of the company goes up in flames. I feel bad for the talented working stiff and managers there. The co-clowns, no so much.