Today the co-founders of Research In Motion submitted an SEC filing stating that they are considering making a bid to buy all the shares of BlackBerry that they don’t currently own.
Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin jointly filed a 13D with the SEC, which is a standard document that must be filed when you control over 5% of the shares of a public company. Lazaridis already held over 5%, but the new document says that he’s teaming up with Fregin, and they jointly own 8% of the stock.
When you get down to “Item 4” of the filing, entitled “Purpose of the Transaction”, here’s what it says:
In light of the Issuer’s recent announcement that its board of directors has formed a Special Committee to explore strategic alternatives to enhance value and increase scale, the Reporting Persons are considering all available options with respect to their holdings of the Shares, including, without limitation, a potential acquisition of all the outstanding Shares of the Issuer that they do not currently own, either by themselves or with other interested investors (an “Acquisition”).
Also, according to the document, Lazaridis and Fregin have hired Goldman Sachs, Centerview Partners and others to advise them, so they could be quite serious.
There is no indication that the potential Lazaridis / Fregin bid has anything to do with Prem Watsa and Fairfax Financial’s bid. Unless I’m wrong, my read of the SEC filing tells me this is a totally separate potential bid.
To be clear, neither Lazaridis or Fregin have bought any new shares recently. The last transaction appears to be from 2012 when Lazaridis bought $50 million worth of stock.
There have been rumors circulating for a while that Lazaridis may enter the mix again. I thought if it was going to happen it would be in support of the Fairfax bid, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Things are getting interesting. We’ll keep following the story.
Read more
How Go Talk intends to be the BlackBerry of mobile carriers
Identity theft often goes through an unexpected route: conning the carrier. Go Talk Wireless wants to stamp out SIM swap fraud at the source.
Could AphyOS be the BlackBerry 10 successor we’ve been waiting for?
I met with representatives of Apostrophy at CES and received a first look at AphyOS — a new privacy-focused, subscription-based mobile OS that is expected launch later this year.
The Apple Watch Ultra is perfect for more than just fitness buffs
The Apple Watch Ultra is positioned as a smartwatch in a class of its own among Apple's smartwatch lineup, and it's in a class of its own amongst all smartwatches. Here's why we love it!
CrackBerry website migration happening this Saturday - DONE
Today is 2/22/22, which has put the number TWO in my head and made me realize it has been a minute or two since I've updated everyone on CrackBerry 2.0 relaunch progress. To fix that, here's an update starting with two exciting things happening this Saturday: 1. CrackBerry Turns 15! February 26, 2022 marks 15 years since CrackBerry.com officially launched. Seriously, where does the...