Canada Pension Funds Eye Some BlackBerry Assets

Two of Canada’s largest pension funds have held preliminary discussions with Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. about its bid for BlackBerry Ltd., yet are holding off from the effort because they only want pieces of the smartphone maker, two people familiar with the talks said.

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and the Alberta Investment Management Corp., which together manage about C$198 billion ($192 billion), are targeting BlackBerry’s secure server network and other business units, the people said. The funds negotiating with Fairfax aren’t interested in backing a bid for the whole company and haven’t joined the bidding consortium yet, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.