Mike Lazaridis, a BlackBerry co-founder and former co-CEO, has officially ditched his plans to acquire the company through a joint bid with a fellow co-founder. Mike Lazaridis dumps his plans to buy the ailing smartphone maker via a joint bid with a fellow co-founder.
This year has been an especially hard one for BlackBerry. After lagging further and further behind the competition, the company placed its last-ditch hopes on two new smartphones, both of which failed to save the company. BlackBerry lost $4.4 billion in the most recent quarter. Lazaridis made his decision public in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Tuesday.
Under the now-defunct plan, which was announced in October, Lazaridis and fellow co-founder Douglas Fregin had combined stakes to reach 8 percent total ownership and said they were considering a purchase of the company. Last month, however, BlackBerry took itself off the market, and new management is trying to turn the company around. In dissolving the plan, Lazaridis' stake in the sagging company is now 4.99 percent.