BlackBerry bidding process called ‘bizarre,’

Alberta pension fund boss mystified

TORONTO BlackBerry Ltd. will probably be broken up amid a “bizarre” bidding process that makes it hard to value the smartphone maker, according to a Canadian pension fund that’s considering an offer.

“It’s the most bizarre sales process I’ve seen in a long time,” Alberta Investment Management Corp. chief executive officer Leo de Bever said. “We’re looking at it but nobody’s come to us with a proposal that makes any sense.”

BlackBerry was little changed Tuesday to close at $7.98, up 0.01 cents.

Investors are betting Fairfax, the Canadian insurer that is BlackBerry’s biggest shareholder, will struggle to find backers or financing for its takeover of the Waterloobased smartphone company by the Nov. 4 deadline.

Meanwhile, Treasury Board president Tony Clement said Tuesday the government has a “national security” role to play as it monitors BlackBerry’s future developments.

“We have a role to play obviously, which involves national security and making sure what occurs is in the public interest and we take that very seriously,” said Clement. “We’ll let it play out in the marketplace and if and when the government has to respond, we certainly will.

“We were looking at the individual assets because that’s how you understand the whole company,” de Bever said. “But it doesn’t necessarily mean that we want to take a carving knife to BlackBerry. The odds are that’s what’s probably going to happen.”

Alberta Investment, which manages $67 billion for 310,000 current and retired government workers in Alberta, would be more willing to consider an investment in BlackBerry if there was a strategic buyer such as Google Inc. involved, de Bever said.

AIMco also wants to see the value of the company’s units disclosed, and a business plan for developing those units in the future, de Bever said from Edmonton. Fairfax, led by CEO Prem Watsa, hasn’t named any backers for its $4.7-billion bid and hadn’t secured financing at the time the offer was announced.

Paul Rivett, president of Toronto-based Fairfax, declined to comment on the BlackBerry sale process Tuesday.

“We do not intend to disclose further developments with respect to the process until we approve a specific transaction or otherwise conclude the review of strategic alternatives,” Lisette Kwong, spokeswoman at BlackBerry, said in an email statement.

“The driver will have to be someone who really understands the assets,” de Bever said. “You can be sure that pretty much all the usual suspects are looking at this. Now how seriously — that’s the question. Looking and doing something are two totally different things.”

BlackBerry has drawn interest from Cerberus Capital Management LP, which is looking to sign a confidentiality agreement with BlackBerry that would give it access to additional financial data, a person with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg.

BlackBerry is laying off about 300 head office employees this week as part of a plan that will reduce its workforce by about 40 per cent.