The big BlackBerry buyout is off and its CEO gets the boot

Remember Fairfax Financial’s ballyhooed $4.7 billion deal to buy (and thereby save) BlackBerry? Well, it’s not happening. The Canadian insurance company has backed out of the deal, prompting speculation that the company couldn’t get the required financing. (Fairfax CEO Prem Watsa, whose company already owns about 10 per cent of BlackBerry, maintains that “we probably could do it, but we decided not to add high yield debt to the company’s structure.”) While Facebook, Lenovo and Blackberry co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin have all recently expressed interest in buying BlackBerry, the troubled tech company says it’s abandoning the idea of selling itself. The new turnaround plan: (1) raise $1 billion from institutional investors; and (2) fire CEO Thorsten Heins. Grim times. [Toronto Star]