Cerberus Reviewing Financials and Considering a Bid for Blackberry

Cerberus Capital Management LP signed a nondisclosure agreement with Blackberry BBRY to gain access to the company's financial information.

The private-equity firm will use the financials to formulate a bid to acquire all of Blackberry.

After a 45 percent hit in sales and $965M loss last quarter, Blackberry put itself up for sale in August. On September 23, Blackberry's largest shareholder, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., made a tentative offer to buy the company for $4.7B equivalent to $9 per share. There have been concerns over this bid as shares are currently trading below the offered price at $8.19.

Blackberry co-founders Mike Lazaridis, who created the Blackberry phone, and Douglad Fregin signed an agreement to work together with Goldman Sachs Group and Centerview Partners LLC on a potential takeover offer on October 10. Last week, Reuters reported that BlackBerry was talking with Cisco CSCO, Google GOOG and SAP SAP regarding this sale.

An anonymous Cerberus employee (due to private deliberations) stated that they see Blackberry as a turnaround business and are considering purchasing the smartphone company as a whole. Cerberus may choose not to proceed, as the firm is still in the early stages of offering a deal.

Cerberus manages more than $20B in assets. The firm has expertise working with financially troubled companies. Cerberus took over almost 80 percent of Chrysler in 2007 and led a group to acquire grocery chains from Supervalu SVU in early 2013.