“BlackBerry Ltd’s decision to accept a $1 billion cash injection from a group of investors led by Canadian financier Prem Watsa shocked other potential bidders for the smartphone maker and has left some investors crying foul,” Greg Roumeliotis and Euan Rocha report for Reuters.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s cruel and unusual punishment to try to keep the walking dead alive. Setting fire to $1 billion in cash would be more productive.
“With the investment deal, BlackBerry abruptly ended an auction process that many investors had hoped would have led to a sale of the company or some of its assets, ending a long decline in its fortunes as a public company,” Roumeliotis and Rocha report. “BlackBerry has bled market share in recent years, as it struggled to compete with Apple Inc’s iPhone and devices running Google Inc’s Android software.”
Roumeliotis and Rocha report, “The investment deal with the Watsa-led group gives BlackBerry more time to come up with a new turnaround strategy and installs a respected industry executive to lead the charge. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins was ousted, and John Chen, credited with turning around Sybase Inc in the late 1990s, took the helm on an interim basis. But investors are skeptical that time will solve the company’s problems… ‘BlackBerry is hemorrhaging employees, it is hemorrhaging customers. The only thing that’s growing is doubt,’ said John Stephenson, a senior vice president at First Asset Investment Management and one of BlackBerry’s disgruntled investors.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you’re still a BlackBerry investor, disgruntlement is the least of your problems.
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