A Qatari sovereign
wealth fund was among a small group of investors who recently contributed $1bn
to Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry, US securities filings have shown.
Qatar Holding LLC
joined the group led by BlackBerry's largest shareholder, Fairfax Financial Holdings, in making the cash
infusion after the company abandoned hopes of finding a buyer earlier this
month.
Fairfax had
offered to buy the rest of BlackBerry and take it private but backed off at the
last minute, opting instead for new management and cash to give it breathing
room to restructure.
BlackBerry has
agreed to pay its new chief executive,
John Chen, $3m a year in cash and bonuses, as well as handing him 13m
restricted shares worth $85m.
BlackBerry helped
create a culture of mobile users glued to smartphones. But it has lost its
lustre as many have turned to iPhones or devices using Google's Android
software.
In January,
BlackBerry unveiled a new platform as it sought to regain lost momentum, but
its most recent numbers suggest that has been a spectacular failure.
In September, the
company announced that it was laying off 4,500 staff - one third of its global
workforce - after losing $965m in its last quarter as sales plummeted.
Canso Investment
Consel, Markel Corporation and Brookfield Asset Management were
also named as part of the investor group in the US Securities and Exchange
Commission filings.
Source: Telegraph
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