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BlackBerry ousts senior executives

Acting CEO John Chen removed chief operating and marketing officers.

OTTAWA — In his first move since becoming acting chief executive of BlackBerry, John S. Chen removed several senior executives at the troubled smartphone-maker, the company said Monday.

Gone are Kristian Tear, the chief operating officer, and Frank Boulben, the chief marketing officer. Brian Bidulka has been replaced as chief financial officer, although he will remain with BlackBerry for the balance of its fiscal year as an adviser.

Roger Martin, the former dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, announced his resignation as a director.

Tear, who was born in Sweden and is a former Sony Ericsson executive, and the French-born Boulben, who worked for several wireless carriers in Europe, were part of a team brought in by Thorsten Heins, BlackBerry’s former chief executive, last year.

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Along with Heins, who is from Germany and a former Siemens executive, they were widely blamed for the failure of the BlackBerry 10 line of phones, which was introduced this year and was supposed to be BlackBerry’s salvation.

It was widely assumed that their positions were vulnerable after Heins was fired earlier this month. His removal followed the failure of a takeover bid to take BlackBerry private by Fairfax Financial Holdings of Toronto, BlackBerry’s largest shareholder. Fairfax instead gathered a consortium of investors to lend BlackBerry $1 billion in convertible debt and brought in Chen, the former chief executive of Sybase, as acting chief executive.

BlackBerry spokesman Adam Emery said the company would no longer have chief operating and chief marketing executives.

In its last reported quarter, BlackBerry revealed a $1 billion loss.