Thursday, October 10, 2013

The conspiracy to take BlackBerry private

A week ago versions of this story were featured prominently across the business media. The gist of the tale is that BlackBerry is by now such a lame duck that Canada's largest cellphone provider will no longer trouble itself with selling a product that is in a death spiral, etc.

Who is benefitting from the tsunami of negative stories about BlackBerry? Why, the folks who have already announced their intention to take the company private. That would be Prem Watsa and company.

Today we are informed, in tiny stories buried deep in the business section or entirely left out of the very news platforms that splashed last weeks bad news all over their home pages, that oopsie, Rogers will be selling the latest BlackBerry after all! All those negative headlines were just a misunderstanding, don't you know!

Perhaps, but it would certainly be a misunderstanding that would serve Mr. Watsa's interests in keeping the share price down, wouldn't it?

Hard to know where such misunderrstandings might originate. After all, the Chair of Rogers and CEO of Rogers Telecommunications, Al Horn, sits on the board of directors of Watsa's Fairfax Financial.

It's a small world, ain't it?

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