BlackBerry CEO Will Cash In if Company Is Sold
Don’t worry about BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins. He’s going to be just fine, regardless of what happens to the foundering smartphone maker. Indeed, he’s in for quite a financial windfall if things really go south.
According to a recent BlackBerry proxy filing (embedded below), Heins stands to make $55.6 million in salary, incentives and equity awards if he sells the company and is pushed out by its new ownership. Should Heins be sacked without a change of control of the company, the value of his departure package drops by more than half: $22 million in salary, incentive payments and equity awards, based on BlackBerry’s March 28 share price.
Not a bad pair of departure packages for Heins, who was named BlackBerry’s CEO in January 2012, in an executive shake-up that saw co-founders and co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie relinquish their positions. It’s worth noting that the size of these payments has increased significantly since Heins first signed on. Back in 2012, Heins would have collected around $21 million if he had been terminated as CEO following an acquisition of the company. Now he stands to make $56 million.
Earlier this week, BlackBerry announced that it was conducting a strategic review of its business options, which could include a joint venture, partnership, a sale of assets, or an outright sale of the company itself.
BlackBerry declined comment on Heins’s departure package.
