Struggling cell phone manufacturer Blackberry today fired its CEO and announced that the sale of the the company to a group of private investors has fallen through.
The Canadian pioneer of the smartphone industry expects to make a loss of a billion dollars this year after disastrous sales of its new handsets and had planned to lay off 4,500 staff.
Directors had been trying to rescue the firm with a sale to its largest shareholder Canadian investment consortium Fairfax, headed by billionaire Prem Watsa.
But Fairfax reportedly struggled to finance its $4.7bn takeover, and Blackberry company now plans to replace its CEO Thorsten Heins and raise about $1 billion from institutional investors.
German-Canadian Heins had been CEO of the firm since January 2012 and oversaw the release of poorly-received handsets the Q10 and Z30.
