BlackBerry co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin are considering a bid to buy the struggling smartphone maker, according to a securities filing on Thursday, raising the prospect of an alternative to a $4.7 billion offer led by its top shareholder.
The company plans to raise $1 billion with a private placement of convertible debentures.
UK-based travel services provider Thomas Cook Group plc will sell for Rs 817.4 crore (Rs 8.17 billion) its entire 77 per cent holding in the Indian arm to Fairbridge Capital (Mauritius) Ltd, a subsidiary of Fairfax Financial Holdings.
He has been a long time Blackberry fan and user.
Bidders eyeing parts of Canadian smartphone maker than the whole company, say sources
This will trigger an open offer under SEBI norms and TCIL will seek to buy up to 26 per cent in Sterling for Rs 230 crore.
Months before Fairfax Financial Holdings Inc bid $4.7 billion for BlackBerry Ltd, Fairfax boss Prem Watsa played a role in securing a golden parachute worth as much as $55 million for the smartphone maker's chief executive.
The S&P BSE Sensex ended down 371 points at 24,966 and the Nifty50 closed 101 points lower at 7,615.
Airports hold pride of place in the government's National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) programme to monetise public assets. Private airport operators, including the Adani group, Fairfax, GMR and Zurich Airport, are expected to evince interest in the next round of public private partnership (PPP) development of state-owned Airport Authority of India (AAI) airports. Industry analysts, however, do not expect bids to be as high as the last round, which saw Adani group gain control of six airports.
'It's a toss-up between a fire sale of equity or merger with a strong bank,' points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Its obsession for growth, chasing corporate clients and giving up its original mandate of meeting the needs of local trade and businesses. A quarter of its loan book has gone bad. That's an error of business strategy, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.