Looks like some less-than-stellar news for BlackBerry has surfaced this morning. The device maker announced today that COO Kristian Tear and CMO Frank Boulben are leaving the company after joining it in May 2012. BlackBerry also revealed that CFO Brian Bidulka is being replaced by James Yersh, who has been with the Waterloo firm since 2008 and previously worked as Senior Vice President, Controller and head of Compliance. Bidulka is expected to stay with BlackBerry as an advisor to the CEO through the remainder of the fiscal year. Roger Martin, a member of BlackBerry's Board of Directors since 2007, rounds out today's list of executive exits.
BlackBerry hasn't offered up any official explanation for any of these latest departures. CEO John Chen has issued a statement to reassure its customers and lay out his plan for the company, saying that BlackBerry is in "a strong cash position" and that he intends to unite his senior management and organizational structure and also to refine BlackBerry's strategy so that it can deliver the best products, security and device management possible.
This latest management shakeup comes less than a month after former BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins announced that he would be stepping down from his position. All of these departures, combined with Fairfax Financial's decision to invest $1 billion in BlackBerry rather than acquire the company for $4.7 billion, are the latest bumps in the rough road that BlackBerry has been traveling on recently.
The company says that it will share more details of today's news during its Q3 2014 results call on Dec. 20. It'll definitely be interesting to hear what BlackBerry has to say about these exec exits and its plans for the near future, so be sure to keep it locked to PhoneDog for more.
Via BlackBerry
