Blackberry founder backs out of buying back his company

Huge loss for Blackberry

Lazaridis had an 8 % share in Blackberry, together with Douglas Fregin, his
partner when starting the company which was called Research in Motion back in the day. That
has been reduced to 4.99 %, with Lazaridis now announcing he is no longer looking
for a way to buy back the company with Fregin.

The
news follows Blackberry’s quarterly loss of 4.4 billion dollars (3.2 billion
euro), four times the loss from the quarter before, with turnover
dropping another 56 %. The huge loss was the result of the write-off of its own
supplies, mostly its new models which are barely selling (if at all).

Grim future

Blackberry has been for sale for a few months, but no one is currently willing
to buy. A large shareholder, Fairfax Financial Holding, put a bid in, but was
unable to finance the deal. It did however save the company with a billion
dollar (730 million euro) loan.

Blackberry’s future is rather grim, with two models planned for 2014 already in the garbage bin.

(Translated by Gary Peeters)