BlackBerry Co-Founder Mike Lazaridis Is Said to Consider Bid for Company
BlackBerry Co-Founder Is Said to Consider Bid for Company — Mike Lazaridis, the co-founder of BlackBerry who stepped down as co-chief executive in 2012, has reached out to private equity firms about a possible bid for the troubled company.
Context & Ripple Effects
The buyer process is barely a month old and already under pressure: BlackBerry announced on 2013-08-12 that it was looking for a buyer, with reporting that CEO Thorsten Heins stands to collect $55.6 million if a sale closes. A week ago, on 2013-09-20, the company disclosed a preliminary quarterly GAAP loss of roughly $950 million, announced 4,500 layoffs, and pivoted its stated strategy to enterprise customers — while the board is reportedly running a fast auction aimed at wrapping up by November.
Into that window comes this report: co-founder Mike Lazaridis, who stepped down as co-chief executive in 2012, is said to have approached private equity firms about a possible bid. It remains unconfirmed, but the timing matters — an insider bidder arriving just as losses deepen and the auction clock runs down changes how every other bidder prices the company.
First-order effects
- The board's reported November auction timeline now has a potential insider bidder to weigh against financial buyers, forcing a decision on whether founder participation raises or complicates the price.
- The 4,500 employees in the restructuring announced 2013-09-20 face added uncertainty over who owns the company mid-layoff, since an ownership change could reshape which units survive the enterprise-focused plan.
Second-order effects
- Competing private equity suitors must now underwrite against a founder's informational edge on what the assets — including the BBM service, whose Android launch has failed to roll out while the iOS version proceeds — are actually worth.
- A Lazaridis-led bid would pressure the current leadership's enterprise pivot: a returning founder could argue for reversing course rather than executing the cost-cutting path the board set last week.
Third-order effects
- If founders of distressed device makers keep circling their own companies as buyers, take-privates become the standard exit for once-dominant handset pioneers rather than rescue mergers among peers.
- Any deal structure that separates the services and messaging assets from the hardware business would formalize the industry's shift toward valuing mobile companies for software and enterprise relationships over device volume.
The trend: Distressed smartphone pioneers are increasingly likely to exit through founder-led or private equity take-privates run against compressed auction timelines, as BlackBerry's own sale process illustrates.