Fairfax’s BlackBerry bid seen stretching the ‘limits of M&A creativity’

[Wireless News]

Fairfax Financial’s $4.7 billion offer to take BlackBerry private is fairly unorthodox. In the first place, Fairfax made the offer public without raising anywhere close to the amount of capital it needed to complete the deal. Second, Fairfax is under no obligation to actually make good on the bid if BlackBerry can’t find a more attractive offer. As Wellington Financial’s Mark McQueen puts it, Fairfax seems intent on testing the “limits of [merger and acquisition] creativity.” “In my life I can’t recall a ~$5 billion cash takeover bid being announced without the financing being lined up in advance,” McQueen writes. “Often, the Regulators don’t allow such a tactic…-Compare that to Michael Dell’s going-private of his company, where Mr. Dell rolled

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