Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management had signed a non-disclosure agreement with BlackBerry Ltd. The purpose is to allow the distressed assets funding specialist access to financial information that can be used to formulat a bid for the Canadian technology company. This was confirmed by a person familiar with the situation.
The firm is discerning whether to bid for all of BlackBerry or just some aspects of it. This was confirmed by a person with knowledge of the transaction who south anonymity as deliberations were private in nature. It may even drop the whole idea altogether.
For its part, Cerberus Capital spokesperson Peter Duda declined to make a comment on the matter as did his counterpart, Adam Emery over at BlackBerry's Waterloo, Ontario headquarters.
According to the source, Cerberus sees BlackBerry as a viable turnaround business instead of assets to be broken off piece per piece. A bid forwarded by the firm would be competing againt the Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd bid. The latter made a tentative offer for the company at USD4.7 billion. Even its founders, Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin are also considering a bid of their own for the beleaguered smartphone maker.
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