Lenovo wants to buy Blackberry

According to the Wall Street Journal, the two companies have signed a confidentiality agreement for the full redemption of the Canadian manufacturer Blackberry by the Chinese Lenovo .

Now largest PC vendor in the world, the Chinese manufacturer Lenovo is now interested in buying all the BlackBerry Canadian, currently in turmoil. As outlined in our colleagues in the WSJ: "redemption BlackBerry Lenovo constitute one of the largest and most remarkable acquisitions of Western business by a Chinese company. This further emphasize the desire of companies to the second global economy play a more improtant role in the West where they try to win both industry expertise and a broader portfolio of products to sell to their cllents. "

However, regardless of the interest of the Chinese manufacturer and whatever may be the amounts it has to invest, the deal could be very complicated. Indeed, the tensions between the Chinese and U.S. governments about cyber espionage are still bright and it is obvious that such a redemption could only be done after approval of the Canadian government, which should also get U.S. approval . In fact, BlackBerry is still firmly entrenched in different American organizations particularly strategic.

1 million BBs strategic

Thus, of the 600,000 mobile held by the U.S. Department of Defense , 470 000 are BBs , according to a Pentagon spokesman . And , in total , more than 1 million units in circulation for federal employees or states including President Obama among users. Already , U.S. authorities said they were aware of attempts to transactions in progress but refuse for the moment to comment on the process. According to Canadian law , any "deal" in excess of 334 million U.S. dollars should be subject to government approval to determine whether there is a real economic benefit or, conversely , a security risk for the country . A year ago , Canada had authorized the repurchase of the oil company Nexen by a Chinese state-owned company for $ 15 billion but has insisted that this authorization was exceptional. Last week , the Canadian authorities have also blocked the acquisition of a fiber operator by an Egyptian telecommunications company .


However, note that Lenovo - private company - it is not its first attempt in the acquisition of a company in the west since the manufacturer had bought IBM's PC division in 2005 for 1.25 billion dollars, which was at the time the largest Sino-US transaction. Since then, Lenovo has continued to invest in the U.S. and several of its territory executives come from western countries. Lenovo is now the world's largest PC vendor to HP and also exceeded for BlackBerry smartphones with 4.7% of sales according to Gartner, while BB has only to 2.7%.