Ottawa Regulators Blocking Lenovo Buy-in Due to National Security, Alleged Reason for BlackBerry’s Change of Plans
The sudden change in BlackBerry's plan to sell the financially challenged company should have aroused suspicion that there's more to the about face than the ability of interim BlackBerry Chief Executive John Chen to turnaround a floundering company like he did before for Sybase.
IBT Australia had previously reported that there is a chance that a foreign buyer could be blocked by the Canadian government interested in acquiring BlackBerry. A report from Globe and Mail indicated that indeed, as reported by IBT, national security was allegedly the reason by Ottawa regulators blocked the sale of the Waterloo, Ontario-based company to Chinese firm Lenovo.
Read: Canadian Government Cites National Security Issue in Planned Review if Buyer of BlackBerry Is a Foreign Company
Citing sources familiar with the negotiations, Globe and Mail said Ottawa had clearly impressed on BlackBerry officials that it would thumb down the plan by the Beijing-based computer maker to take over BlackBerry. It stressed the government policy a month or two ago.
YouTube/Herb Duncan
It is not the first time that Ottawa regulators had blocked foreign takeovers such as the bids for Potash Corporation and Manitoba Telecom Services.
But the warning by the Canadian government for BlackBerry not to accept Lenovo's bid should not be seen as an anti-China policy, a Canadian official said.
"We have been pretty consistent that the message is Canada is open to foreign investment and investment from China in particular but not at the cost of compromising national security," Globe and Mail quoted the official who requested not to be named.
After all, even BlackBerry is known for its secure network which handles millions of encrypted message daily. Thus, when BlackBerry made available for free the BBM app to iOS- and Android-run phones, the company logged 10 million downloads of the messaging app in one week.
National security was also the reason why Ottawa told Chinese telecom giant Huawei technologies that it would block the company from bidding to build Canada's planned government telecommunications and e-mail network.
A similar stand was made by U.S. legislators for Huawei's planned bid in 2010 to be a supplier for American telecom carrier Sprint Nextel.
YouTube/NTDTV
