BlackBerry co-founders mull bid for company: filing
Mike Lazaridis, co-founder and former chief executive of beleaguered mobile company BlackBerry, is considering a bid for his old firm, according to a recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The bid includes Douglas Fregin, who co-founded the company with Lazaridis in 1984 and retired in 2007, and aligns with previous reports that Lazaridis was interested and reaching out to private equity firms for assistance.
Shares of the Waterloo, Ontario-based company (BBRY) were up almost one percent, to $8.19, in the wake of the news.
The announcement comes just three weeks after a $4.7 billion—that's $9 per share—bid by a consortium led by Fairfax Financial. It also comes mere hours after Stephen Bates, chief of BlackBerry's enterprise software and services unit, took to the stage at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Fla. to convince customers that the company was still worth believing in.
Along with co-CEO Jim Balsillie, Lazaridis stepped down from his role in January 2012. He left the company completely two months later. He and Fregin remain the company's largest individual shareholders, each with an eight percent share of the company. (Balsillie sold his stake in December 2012.) That ownership gives the pair the foundation to launch a bid to take BlackBerry private.
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