Less than a month after dismissing CEO Thorsten Heins and replacing him with former Sybase chief John S. Chen, BlackBerry has announced that the Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Marketing Officer are all leaving the company, along with the resignation of board member Roger Martin.
Leaving BlackBerry will be COO Kristian Tear, CFO Brian Bidulka and CMO Frank Boulben. Bidulka will stay to the end of BlackBerry’s fiscal year to assist with the transition and be replaced by James Yersh, the current senior vice president, Controller and head of Compliance at BlackBerry.
“I thank Kristian and Frank for their efforts on behalf of BlackBerry. I look forward to working more directly with the talented teams of engineers, and the sales and marketing teams around the world to facilitate the BlackBerry turn-around and to drive innovation,” said BlackBerry CEO John Chen in a press release. “I also thank Brian for his eight years of dedicated service to BlackBerry. I look forward to working with James and his Finance team as we move forward, execute on our plans and deliver long-term value for our shareholders.”
Chen added, “BlackBerry has a strong cash position and continues, by a significant margin, to be the top provider of trusted and secure mobile device management solutions to enterprise customers around the world. Building on this core strength, and in conjunction with these management changes, I will continue to align my senior management team and organizational structure, and refine the Company’s strategy to ensure we deliver the best devices, mobile security and device management through BES 10, provide multi-platform messaging solutions with BBM, and expand adoption of QNX embedded systems.”
The move to make changes to the remaining executive team at BlackBerry is not surprising or all that unexpected.
I don’t think you’ll find anyone arguing with the suggestion that BlackBerry’s board needs more bench strength in actually running a technology company.
