On Monday, it was made apparent that Fairfax and BlackBerry were not moving forward on a $4.7 billion deal to take the company private. Instead, BlackBerry will be taking on financing of $1 billion (USD) from Fairfax Financial and “other institutional investors.” Until today the other participants were not known — Fairfax is spending $250 million of its own cash on the deal — but we heard yesterday that Qatar Holdings invested an undisclosed sum of money.
A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today reveals the names of the investors, plus the amount of money they’re providing in exchange for debenture bonds.
- Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited: $250,000,000
- Mackenzie Financial Corporation: $200,000,000
- Canso Investment Counsel Ltd.: $300,000,000
- Markel Corporation: $100,000,000
- Brookfield Asset Management Inc.: $50,000,000
- Qatar Holding LLC: $100,000,000
BlackBerry will be using this injection to continue to build their business and gain traction within the enterprise market.
In addition, John Chen has been chosen to lead BlackBerry into the future. The filing also revealed his role as “Executive Chairman” gives him “control over strategic direction, strategic relationships, and organization goals of BlackBerry and authority over hiring, retention, duties, and responsibilities of all officers, executives and other employees.”
For his time and energy, Chen will receive a “base salary of $1,000,000 and Performance Bonus of 200% of Base Salary, or $2,000,000”. In addition, he’ll also score 13,000,000 restricted share units (~2.0% fully-diluted for $1.25bn convert), vesting over five years, plus the usual benefits, including “four weeks paid vacation, and car and driver.” Similar to Heins, if Chen is terminated without clause, he will be “paid remaining full year salary as well as 2x base salary and 2x base bonus (total of $6,000,000).”
BlackBerry is currently trading at $6.51, so the 13 million shares is valued at $84,630,000. Not too shabby.
