Its sale or merge, folks: furious BlackBerry investors have called on RIM to sale or merge as service black out crisis continues. Jaguar Financial Corp, a major shareholder of phone maker Research In Motion, has called on troubled giant to to fix its “governance problems” by sale, merger or division.
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The fresh ultimatium comes as Jaguar yesterday announced a worrying increase of those who now support its motion.
8% of all RIM shareholders now support the sale or merge call – up from 5% – and Jaguar is in “discussions” with others, it said.
Jaguar CEO Vic Alboini launched a stinging attack of RIM senior management’s “unfocused performance” and lack of leadership in a statement yesterday, which he claimed lead to one of its Co-CEOs buying a NHL hockey team as well as the absence of Chairman for three years.
He also questioned committment and skills at top and called for “swift” replacements: “A culture of management dominance at RIM must be eliminated and replaced by proper governance oversight by a committed tech-oriented Board that challenges the technical direction of management.”
“The lack of Board oversight and absence of an independent Chairman allowed one of the two Co-CEOs to chase his dream of buying an NHL hockey team during the same period. “
“Instead of consequences, the underperforming Co-CEOs were rewarded by being appointed as Co-Chairmen.”
RIM shares have plummeted in the past year down a shocking 58% but rose 5.1 percent to $24.41 New York yesterday.
RIM recently posted profits landslide which slipped 59%.
This latest criticism couldn’t come at a worse time for Canadian BlackBerry makers, who are fighting negative publicity following a major crash in infrastructure two days ago, leaving thousands without web and messaging services.
Australia was not among those countries hit and North America too was unaffected.
BlackBerry initially said it had fixed the issue and was “operating normally” which hit 70m users in Europe, Middle East and South America, but it appears the problems still exists.
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The problem appears to be associated with BIS consumer systems rather than its enterprise servers, IT consultants believe.
BB has its own server that manages web browsing, email and BBM.
“The messaging and browsing delays being experienced by BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure,” it said in a statement.
Its system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as tested and were forced to deal with a backlog of data.
“We are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience and we will continue to keep you informed” it added.
Alboini also acknowledged “Nokia and Motorola are no longer industry leaders” and that BlackBerry were now “playing catch-up in a dynamic industry where others such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and HTC have jumped into the pole position.”
But regardless of shareholders, he hinted major change at the top was inevitable.
“When tech companies falter, Boards do take action: Carol Bartz is no longer CEO of Yahoo!;Leo Apotheker was recently dismissed from Hewlett-Packard; and Motorola split into two companies and brought in new management.”
And even Google supplanted managerial dominance, he added.
