BlackBerry Co-Founder Dumps All His Shares In The Company

According to Reuters, Jim Balsillie who co-founded RIM BlackBerry has dumped all his shares in the company in 2012. Now it’s not unusual for people to reduce their holdings in a company when they leave, but I cannot remember the last time someone has completely cashed out. Either he needs to the money (perhaps he wants to buy a hockey team?) or it’s a major no confidence vote in BlackBerry’s future. But you shouldn’t feel sorry for him. Balsillie held 26.8 million shares in 2011. So if you accept that the stock was around $15 on the Toronto Stock Exchange at the time, his net worth was something just shy of $400 million at the time. But I would guess he cashed out for less that $15 a share seeing as BlackBerry stock had gone into the single digits in 2012. Thus I would think it’s safe to say that he’s not poor.

I guess we’ll see shortly if he was right to dump his stock, or if he made a major mistake.

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