The Canada based smartphone company acquired a mobile security startup due to which a lot of issues in business started coming up.
The New York Times has shown a very interesting side of Blackberry Ltd.’s acquisition of Good Technology. The Canada based smartphone company acquired the mobile security provider back in September 2015 for $425 million. This news came as a rather unpleasant surprise to the employees of the company since the company had planned to go public in the near future.
After the unexpected acquisition took place between the two mobile security provider companies, the employees were invited to a conference call meeting with both the chief executive officer of the company, John Chen and Christy Wyatt, who during the call informed the employees regarding the acquisition. This meeting just created more confusion amongst the workers of the startup security provider since during the meeting; John Chen humorously said to Wyatt that it only bought the company for $425 million when its private evaluation was at least $1.1 billion.
Things further got heated up when an investors’ note circled around amongst the shareholders of the startup as many of the employees of the organization had shares in the company. Employees found out from the note that the stock that they owned was worth much less than what it was worth when they had bought it. From a stock price of $4.32 in the previous year, the shares were now at 44 cents a share.
Another hit, which made the employees at the startup furious, was when they found out that back in March they rejected an offer that was worth $825 million. Because of the tension that was going on in the office, after this news broke down, angry workers of the organization broke the glass wall of the conference room due to which the management brought counselors to calm the workers down.
According to the investors note. These stockholders did not even have protection for the shares that they owned and on the other hand a few investors and some of the board members of Good Technology who did have protection left with generous amounts. A total of six investors had preferred to protect stock on which they made as much as $125 million whereas the CEO Christy Wyatt, herself made over $4 million and added $1.9 of the severance. , after quitting the job.
A lawsuit was filed by the disappointed staff of the mobile security company in Delaware Chancery Court. According to the lawsuit, the minority shareholders did not get what they deserved and the rest of the shareholders did not have the best interest at heart for them. Furthermore, they stated that the damages were not even revealed.
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