RIM's board re-elected at annual meeting WATERLOO, Ontario (Reuters) - Research In Motion Ltd shareholders elected the company's slate of directors at its annual meeting, the first presided over by new CEO Thorsten Heins, who faces an uphill battle to put the embattled BlackBerry maker back on track. At a meeting on Tuesday where Heins outlined the company's strategy ahead of next year's introduction of a new line of BlackBerry devices, preliminary results showed that a significant portion of the votes were withheld, including 19 percent for former co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. John Richardson had 30 percent of votes withheld, following the recommendation of proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis, which said Richardson, as lead director, had failed to properly oversee the provision of stock options to RIM employees, which were erroneously back-dated over an eight-year period. The meeting gives investors a chance to ask RIM's new management teams tough questions after a year in which its stock dropped nearly 80 percent and its share of the smartphone market plunged. Just weeks ago Heins, who on Tuesday promised to turn RIM into a "lean, mean hunting machine," delayed the planned launch of the next-generation BlackBerry 10 - which RIM hopes will reverse its sinking market share - until early next year. RIM also posted its first operating loss in eight years and said 5,000 jobs, almost a third of RIM's workforce, would be cut as the company struggles to compete with tech giants including Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft. Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Peter Galloway and Janet Guttsman