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| Economy |
| Kodak edges toward bankruptcy |
| 2012-01-07 |
| [Dawn] Eastman Kodak, the company which brought photography to the masses a century ago, faces a gloomy future amid new reports that it is on the edge of bankruptcy. Never able to rebuild after the digital wave blew its core film business away from the mass market, the Wall Street Journal reported on late Wednesday that Kodak has already begun preparing to ask for protection from creditors. On Tuesday the New York Stock Exchange told the company, once one of the fabled 30 Dow Jones blue chips, that it faces delisting from the exchange if it cannot get its stock price back above $1.00 level. In its heyday Kodak shares topped $80 in 1996 -- just at the outset of the digital photo revolution that eventually replaced the need for consumers to buy Kodak film, once a virtual monopoly in the US market. On Wednesday its share price plunged 28 per cent to 47 cents a share; Thursday it sank another 10.6 per cent to 42 cents as Moody's downgraded the company's debt rating to a very low Caa3, citing "a heightened probability of a bankruptcy over the near term." And on Thursday the company's chief communications officer quit, following in the wake of three board directors in the past two weeks. The Wall Street Journal said the company is still hoping that it can sell off some of its valuable patent portfolio to raise money. But if that last-ditch effort fails, it could file for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 protection, later this month or in February, the Journal said citing sources familiar with the issue. That would place the jobs of its 19,000 employees in question. At its height in the 1980s, it had 145,000 workers. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #13 Kodak made the sensor for the fabulous Leica M9. They deserve to survive. |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2012-01-07 22:12 |
| #12 I'm sure the remaining company officers and executives are busily looting the company as we speak. Lets see an executive compensation report and then I'll decide whether to feel 'sorry' for them or not. To lazy to go and look for it myself, so f*ck em. Too bad for the 19K sorry smucks that do nothing but go to work and break their backs for them every day. That's the only sad part in my book. |
| Posted by: bigjim-CA 2012-01-07 21:51 |
| #11 Yesss! That's it, the new Photo Czar. |
| Posted by: Clilet Darling of the Ostrogoths8010 2012-01-07 14:35 |
| #10 No, no bailout. But the Kodak CEO now works for Obama in a newly created bureaucracy! |
| Posted by: newc 2012-01-07 14:02 |
| #9 No bailout? I guess they weren't too big to fail. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2012-01-07 13:32 |
| #8 So true TW. Rochester is between the snow plumes off Erie and Ontario. After the former, before the latter. Buffalo and Syracuse get clobbered. Proco you are so right. There were many people at Kodak and DEC that saw the problems. Many also saw answers. The problem was which answers were right? Just because there's more than one answer doesn't mean that all answers are right. Trying to turn around any large institution takes time even if you get it right; and time is something that the high velocity environment of high tech just doesn't afford you. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2012-01-07 12:06 |
| #7 Oh, BTW, Rochester NY doesn't get all that much snow in the winter despite being on a Great Lake. So true, AlanC. That's because the snow falls on Buffalo and the Southtowns area, leaving Rochester in a snow shadow, so to speak. In fact, Mr. Wife's parents' house in Lackawanna on the southwest side of Buffalo gets about a foot more snow than my mother's house on the northeast side of the city. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2012-01-07 11:52 |
| #6 What they couldn't do is find the right way out of the maze. Business or political institutions both. It's institutional behavior. The ability to truly reinvent oneself is not that prevalent. Either there's a collapse or a revolution. Neither of which are usually pretty for those who are involved in the process. It takes leadership. Unfortunately too many confuse management with leadership. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2012-01-07 11:22 |
| #5 Awesomeness of Capitalism removing the un-needed. Imagine this happening in a un-needed Government department with 150,000 employees? |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2012-01-07 11:13 |
| #4 I worked at Kodak as an IS consultant for most of '96 -'97. The one thing that twists my knickers in situations like this are the long line of simpletons that come out with the "We warned them, they didn't listen" crap. Same thing about DEC where I worked for 14 yrs. before they crashed and burned in the late '80s - early '90s. Both Kodak and DEC knew what the issues were and caught on to the danger. What they couldn't do is find the right way out of the maze. I'm not absolving the people there but it is way too complicated for the brain-dead "they should have gone digital" type of commentary. Oh, BTW, Rochester NY doesn't get all that much snow in the winter despite being on a Great Lake. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2012-01-07 10:01 |
| #3 Save their 40mpixle imager production line! |
| Posted by: Water Modem 2012-01-07 06:17 |
| #2 That is the most legible JM comment ever. You should consider writing like that more often, I might stop automatically skipping your posts. |
| Posted by: gromky 2012-01-07 04:46 |
| #1 No surprise here - at Penn State, my Case Group [among others] did a detailed presentation in front of Kodak Reps warning that Kodak must change or else face its own demise. CAN'T SAY THEY WERE WEREN'T WARNED. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2012-01-07 00:10 |