OTTAWA, March 5 — Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry hand-held device, said on Monday that a top executive stepped down from one of his posts after the company said it would restate about $250 million in earnings after reviewing its stock option grants.

The executive, James L. Balsillie, will no longer be the chairman but will remain as a co-chief executive. He and the other co-chief executive, Mike Lazaridis, will pay about $8.5 million toward the company’s restatement costs.

The restatement is substantially higher than the company’s initial estimate of $25 million to $45 million.

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Shakeup at the place I call work. A few unfortunate but overall positive happenings.

First off - RIM executives (in simple terms) hid 250 million dollars from the public. Their restated earnings will be lower than initially announced earnings when accounting for this new found money. Every executive who benefitted from the backdating is more than willing - and will repay any additional benefits (the additional lining in their pockets) that backdating the options had back to RIM. I am very impressed (in a moral/honesty sort of way) that RIM revealed such drastic numbers, giving the fact that they provided an outlook of ~$40 million. This investigation was done voluntarily without any requests from the SEC or OSC and to be so brutally honest only reinforces investor confidence.

Balsillie steps down as Chairman of the BOD- I believe this is good considering that it’s hard to lead the vote and be indifferent on Board of Director subjects such as executive pay raises and bonuses when you’re one of the executives who would benefit from such events. He will remain co-CEO and continue the (great) job he is doing.

Laurier grad and all-star corporate finance and accounting guru, Dennis Kavelman has been promoted to the position of COO - there are now three COO’s at RIM. This leaves the role of CFO ripe for the picking - my resume is already in.

Other events that took place include two directors on the board announcing they will be leaving, as well a couple of new additions to the board including an executive from RBC and the former head of IBM Canada.

All of these changes and the stock didn’t even dip 1%. That’s a definite vote of confidence from the market regarding the future of RIM.

Disclaimer: I am still an employee at RIM.