Blackberry, no longer for sale, replaces CEO

Fairfax taking important company
positions

Former Sybase CEO John Chen
will become the temporary CEO, taking over from CEO Thorsten Heins, who
will receive a 55 million dollars (42 million euro) severance package. Fairfax
CEO Prem Watsa will become lead director and chair of the compensation,
nomination & governance committee, replacing David Kerr in the latter
position. Watsa will however keep his position at Fairfax.

At the end of September, Fairfax was
offering 9 dollars per share, resulting in a possible full purchase of some 4.7
billion dollars (3.5 billion euro). Blackberry had put itself on the market
after it had succumbed to the endless pressure from parties like Samsung and
Apple, which had resulted in bad financial numbers. It had placed its hopes on
a new line of smartphones in September, but that did not help the bottom line.

(translated by Gary Peeters)