Research In Motion Ltd (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, surged the most in almost two weeks on Tuesday after a report said the company might name an independent chairman to appease investors wanting to see a leadership change.
Former Royal Bank of Canada chief operating officer Barbara Stymiest, a RIM director, may be the leading candidate for the job, the National Post reported on Tuesday, citing unidentified sources familiar with the situation.
A committee of independent directors is reviewing the company’s leadership structure. The panel will report findings by Jan. 31, RIM spokeswoman Marisa Conway said on Monday by e-mail, reiterating a previously stated deadline.
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RIM’s board will then respond publicly to any recommendations, she said, declining to address the Post’s report.
RIM is facing demands from investors led by Northwest & Ethical Investments LP to name an independent chairman — a role currently shared by co-chief executive officers Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis — to inject fresh thinking. RIM is losing market shares as BlackBerry models introduced last year failed to stem customer defections to Apple Inc’s iPhone and devices built on Google Inc’s Android platform.
RIM, based in Waterloo, Ontario, rose 7 percent to US$15.51 at the close in New York, the biggest gain since Dec. 21. The stock dropped 75 percent last year.
The firm’s share of cellphone subscribers in the US, where sales declines have been steepest, dropped to 6.5 percent in the three months through November, from 7.1 percent in the previous quarter, according to research firm ComScore Inc.
Northwest & Ethical, which was promised a role in studying leadership changes in exchange for withdrawing a proposal to split the chairman and CEO roles in June, had yet to have any substantial discussions about the review as of late November, Northwest vice president of ethical funds Robert Walker said in an interview at the time.
If a report isn’t done by Jan. 31, Northwest will again push for an investor vote on splitting the roles, he said then.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last