Research in Motion hasn"t had a lot to be proud of lately. The company behind the Blackberry smartphone and the Playbook tablet have announced mass layoffs in the past few months along with poor financial numbers and smaller than expected shipment numbers of the Playbook. Today, Businessweek.com reports that shares of RIM went sky high in trading today as rumors from a UK media outlet said that the company might be acquired by Vodafone.
The rumors were started on Tuesday by the UK-based Independent newspaper who claimed via unnamed sources that the Vodafone wireless carrier could be one of a number of "potential aggressors” for RIM. Stock prices went up 12 percent on the rumors which was the biggest one day rise of RIM stock since April 2009. Despite the media rumors, some analysts don"t believe the talk. Jeff Fidacaro, an analyst at Susquehanna International Group, said of the Vodafone rumor, "I don’t give much credence to that speculation just because it is a carrier."
While some people likely made some money today on RIM"s rising stock price, even the company"s own executives don"t seem to be interesting in buying a piece of RIM. Bloomberg reports that executives at RIM haven"t bought any new shares of the company"s stock in the past six years. On the other hand those same RIM leaders have sold off stock at least 11 times during that same time frame. That has caused some investors to question whether or not they should invest in RIM if the company"s own execs won"t do the same.