Kodak’s Moments running out - Chapter 11 planned
News that Kodak had started the preparations for a possible bankruptcy, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, wiped 28 per cent from its already-battered stock price yesterday. The shares ended the day at 47 cents, more than 90 per cent below their level of a year ago.
Corporate arrogance sinks a former blue chip and mainstay of the Western New York economy. 15 years ago, Kodak had 60,000 employees in Rochester, NY alone. Today, the company employs roughly 7,000 locally.
Signs of the company’s gathering problems have become more apparent in recent days with the departure of three directors and a warning from the New York Stock Exchange that it risked being delisted if its shares remain below $1. Two representatives of buy-out firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, which put $300m into Kodak in 2009, quit the board late last month, along with Laura Tyson, a chairwoman of the US Council of Economic Advisers during the Bill Clinton presidency.
Whatever is left (if anything) of EK after bankruptcy will bear no resemblance to the once-proud global imaging giant built by George Eastman. A specialized printer business, a few odds and ends in the digital imaging sector. All contingent upon a successful sale of a portfolio of patents to liberate cash; patents, which, if management had commercialized them, would have made EK a leading digital imaging company with a presence in photography, telephony, computing, and more.