Watsa reports 10 percent stake in RIM

(Reuters) - Investor Prem Watsa reported an almost 10 percent stake in Research in Motion Ltd as of July 4, according to a regulatory filing.

Watsa, the CEO of Canadian insurer Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd , had earlier reported a 5.12 percent passive holding in Research in Motion as of January 26.

The 9.9 percent stake in the BlackBerry maker, representing 51.9 million shares, is valued at about C$356.2 million, as of Friday's closing on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Watsa, a value investor whose approach and acumen is sometimes compared to Warren Buffett's, joined RIM's board in January as part of a front-office shuffle in which Thorsten Heins replaced longtime co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis.

As of May 22, Mike Lazaridis was the biggest investor in RIM with a 5.66 percent stake, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Once the dominant player in the smartphone sector, RIM's Blackberry has withered from competition from Apple's iPhone and Google's Android system, prompting Lazaridis and Balsillie, the men who had engineered RIM's rise, to step down in favor of Heins.

Shares of RIM closed at C$6.87 on Friday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Shounak Dasgupta in Bangalore; Editing by Don Sebastian)



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