Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are out—but will a new CEO be enough to save RIM?

In an attempt to halt Research In Motion’s death spiral, executive duo Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are being shoved out stepping down as co-CEOs and chairmen of the board—though the announcement hasn’t helped to buoy the stock so far. The man tasked with turning RIM around is Thorsten Heins, a former Siemens AG exec who, until yesterday, was one of two COOs at the BlackBerry maker. Investors had been trying to oust Balsillie and Lazaridis for some time, but it seems a nudge from super-savvy, super-rich Prem Watsa, the CEO of Fairfax Financial—which is now one of the RIM’s largest shareholders—is what sealed the deal. Now that the executive reshuffle is done, the question is whether Heins will prove himself a leader in his own right, or if he will simply follow Balsillie and Lazardis’s, er, playbook. Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »