By Euan Rocha, Allison Martell and Greg Roumeliotis TORONTO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd abandoned on Monday its plan to sell itself and said its CEO is stepping down, sparking a 16 percent dive in its share price and raising fears the struggling smartphone maker is running out of options. After a two-month review of strategic options and talks with potential buyers that included Facebook, Lenovo and private equity firms such as Cerberus Capital Management LP, BlackBerry said it will abandon a sale. Instead, it will raise $1 billion by issuing convertible notes to a group of long-term investors including its largest shareholder, Fairfax Financial Holdings. The only formal offer to buy BlackBerry - a tentative one - had come from Fairfax, which wanted to take the company private for $4.7 billion.



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