We had previously heard that apart from Fairfax, there are others who might be interested in BlackBerry as well, and one of them was Cerberus. At that time, Cerberus’ interest was merely that of interest, but now a report from Bloomberg has revealed that Cerberus has indeed signed an NDA with BlackBerry and are reportedly in the early stages of considering a takeover bid. As it stands, BlackBerry is believed to be taken over by Fairfax and have reportedly signed a letter of intent, but at the same time BlackBerry is allowed to shop for other bidders during the process in the event that they find something better. Fairfax’s bid on BlackBerry was valued at $4.7 billion and with Cerberus being an equity firm specializing in distressed investments, it is unclear as to how much they could offer BlackBerry, and what they plan to do with the company should the deal go through.
It had been previously reported that BlackBerry had gone shopping for other potential bidders and had even approached the likes of Intel, Google, and Samsung to see if they might be interested in buying them out. Given BlackBerry’s vast portfolio of mobile-related patents and then some, there is some value to the company, although their recent attempts at re-entering the smartphone market with BlackBerry 10 fell short of expectations. In any case we’re not sure if BlackBerry will be able to close a deal by November, which is the timeframe they gave themselves, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for updates.
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