It may be too late for a "revival."
Investor Says Momentum Builds for Breakup of Research in Motion
By EVELYN M. RUSLI
DealBook
New York Times
October 11, 2011, 10:28 am
The call is growing louder for Research in Motion to explore a sale of all or part of the company.
On Tuesday, the Jaguar Financial Corporation, a Canadian activist investor that is leading a campaign to agitate for change at RIM, the BlackBerry maker, announced on Tuesday that it had the support of shareholders representing 8 percent of the company’s shares.
In a statement, Jaguar Financial advised the company to install a new chief executive and chairman and to explore options to increase shareholder value, including a sale of the company, a merger or a split that would divide RIM into three separate businesses.
“Our game plan is to gain the support of shareholders representing a significant number of RIM shares,” Vic Albioni, chief executive of Jaguar Financial, said in a statement. “Our supportive shareholders approve Jaguar’s plan to negotiate, at this point in time, changes in governance and the pursuit of a value creation transaction.”
Jaguar, a boutique Canadian merchant bank, is far from RIM’s largest shareholder, but it is tapping into a base of increasingly restive investors.
The stock is hovering at five-year lows. Since the start of the year, shares of RIM have plunged nearly 60 percent. The company has been troubled by production delays and an increasingly competitive environment, as more consumers opt for the Apple iPhone or buy mobile devices based on Google’s Android operating system.
In September, Jaguar sent RIM a tersely worded letter in which it criticized the company for its corporate governance structure (which includes two chief executives that serve as co-chairmen) and a lack of innovation.
On Tuesday, Jaguar stepped up its rhetoric, calling for the dismissal of RIM’s chief executives and renewing complaints that the governance structure had resulted in a lack of focus.
“The lack of board oversight and absence of an independent chairman allowed one of the two co-C.E.O.’s to chase his dream of buying an NHL hockey team during the same period,” Jaguar said in its statement.
The appointment of a new chief executive, the firm continued, would “address the historical lack of attention and oversight at the board level, and the need for a laser beam focus by management on RIM’s business rather than distractions such as a professional hockey team.”
Jaguar also called on RIM’s board to follow the lead of several technology giants, which have recently pursued major changes. In the last two months, for example, the firm noted that Yahoo had ejected its chief executive, Carol A. Bartz; Hewlett-Packard had said goodbye to Léo Apotheker; and Google had purchased Motorola Mobility after it was spun out of Motorola.
“The path to negotiated change is precise and clear; it is not paved with uncertainty. It is time for meaningful and obvious change,” Mr. Albioni said.
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