Andre Yoskowitz
7 Nov 2013 20:47
Lenovo, the world's biggest PC maker, actively tried to bid for BlackBerry, but the Canadian government told them it would not accept a Chinese takeover due to national security concerns.
BlackBerry, which is a source of national pride and is also tied into Canada's telecom infrastructure, never received a formal bid due to the government making their decision known to Lenovo executives.
Earlier this week, the company dropped its plans to go private, and instead took a $1 billion financing injection from a group including major shareholder Fairfax Financial.
Lenovo operates in over 60 countries and is a public company, but 32 percent of its shares are owned by Legend Holdings Ltd., a Chinese investment firm that is widely believed to be run by the Chinese government. BlackBerry says its infrastructure sees 30 petabytes of data traffic each month.
The Canadian government recently rejected an Egyptian bid to purchase a division of Manitoba Telecom Services, also due to unspecified national security concerns about the national fibre-optic network.