BlackBerry marketing manager departs as top brass face shareholder reckoning

Two longtime board members also to leave devices company

BlackBerry US marketing manager Richard Piasentin has quit the company, with two long-standing board members set to follow.

People familiar with the matter said Piasentin departed last month, while a spokesperson has confirmed he is no longer with the company. More restructuring is apparently due.

Longtime board members John Wetmore and former chairman John Richardson have said they are not looking for re-election to the board.

The nine remaining BlackBerry board members were all re-elected, all but one receiving 98 per cent of the vote or higher.

BlackBerry's top brass took some direct criticism from shareholders, with one investor branding the US rollout of the Z10 "a disaster" while CEO Thorsten Heins admitted the company "did not deliver" what analysts and investors had expected.

Shareholder Vic Alboini of Jaguar - an activist shareholder - brought up the lingering issue of whether the company could be broken up or sold outright. Heins replied that before "strategic options" were considered, "I think you have to create value.

"Currently, I cannot distract management from what I expect them to do," said Heins.

BlackBerry officially changed its name from Research in Motion Ltd. to BlackBerry Ltd. and has since seen a 0.99 per cent stock rise from a meeting which, from all accounts, seemed anything but positive at the time.

Heins defended himself and his staff, stating that "there were many lessons learned" at the US launch, but maintained it was not a disaster. It was the US carriers, said Heins, that were more to blame as a result of "opportunistic thinking" in only wishing to promote the most immediately popular devices.