BlackBerry accepts offer to buy 3500 million made by the fund ... - Público.pt

BlackBerry announced on Monday it had accepted a bid by a consortium led by investment fund Fairfax Financial, which offered nine U.S. dollars per share of the company, a total that will be around 4700 million dollars, close to 3500 million.

The background is Canadian, such as BlackBerry, and now owns 10% of the company. Pay cash to shareholders.

Fairfax now has six weeks to review the accounts of multinational and decide if the deal ends. During this period, the BlackBerry can continue looking for buyer, but will have to pay a indeminização case accepted an alternative offer, worth 30 cents per share. If you accept another offer having already signed a definitive agreement with Fairfax, the indeminização increases to 50 cents per share.

BlackBerry, whose popularity of mobile phones fell dramatically last month had publicly announced its willingness to be purchased, in what some analysts considered a maneuver of last resort for not having found interested in business.

Last week, the multinational announced a cut of 4,500 employees worldwide, a number slightly higher than one third of the workforce – in March, the last time I reported the number of workers, had 12,700 employees. Also last week, the company warned that it would present the next reporting quarterly results a loss between 950 and 995 million dollars (between 700 and 735 million euros). Despite the poor results of recent years, the BlackBerry has no debt and has a liquidity than 2600 million dollars.

This is the second major deal of its kind this month. The operation of mobile phones of Nokia, another manufacturer who failed to successfully make the transition to the era of modern smartphones, was sold to Microsoft, a strategic partner since 2011, for 5440 euros.

BlackBerry was once almost synonymous with smartphone, known for the safety of mobile phones, the messaging system itself and the physical keyboard, which is the brand image. The arrival of the iPhone in 2007 changed the concept of mobile and the Canadian could not adapt to consumer preference for touch screens and platforms stuffed applications.

This year, the BlackBerry lost the third place in the market for the Windows Phone platform, which is mostly sold in Nokia handsets. According to data from IDC analyst, on the second quarter, the Android system led with 79.3% market share, followed by iOS, Apple, with 13.2%. Windows Phone had 3.7% and BlackBerry 2.9%.

Just last week, the company introduced the world’s mobile phone Z30, the fourth model with the operating system BlackBerry 10, presented at the beginning of the year as a time of transformation of the multinational.