In Hindsight, This Secret, Failed Plan For A $6 Billion Boardroom Coup At BlackBerry Looks Awesome

The fate of BlackBerry hangs in the balance. It has a deal on paper to take itself private via Canadian insurer Fairfax Financial Holdings for $4.7 billion. But the company is still shopping itself in case there is a sweeter rescue bid out there: Last week, BlackBerry met with Facebook. We'd be surprised if Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was tempted into owning his own ailing phone company, though.

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The fact that BlackBerry today can only attract $4.7 billion from potential buyers puts some new perspective on a secret plan put together last year by tech venture capital investor Robin Chan.

He wanted to raise $6 billion from backers, approach the board of directors with a hostile bid, replace the management, "fork" its operating system, and turn BlackBerry into the Android of enterprise. Chan, who has funded Twitter, Square and Foursquare, among others, called his plan a "coup d'etat" that would have rescued BlackBerry. But he didn't get enough backing and the plan came to nothing.

The plan was codenamed "BBX." It is outlined in a PowerPoint deck on the following pages. You can read more about it on The Verge.

You can download the deck in its entirety from Slideshare.