[Leica] End of the Yellow Box - Not quite

[lrzeitlin at aol.com (lrzeitlin at aol.com)]

Kodak announced the final disposition of its image making assets today. 
It seems the employees pension fund will own the image making business. 
They will probably sell it off piecemeal. No more Big Yellow Father in 
Rochester. Here is the press release:

"More than a year after declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Kodak has made 
a deal to sell the camera film business on which it was founded, among 
other assets. As part of a $2.8 billion settlement agreement with its 
largest creditor, the U.K. Kodak Pension Plan (KPP), the company?s 
personalized imaging and document imaging businesses will be spun off 
under new ownership to KPP. The deal, announced today and subject to 
the approval of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, will also give Kodak $650 
million to help it emerge from bankruptcy.

So what is actually set to be spun off? You may recall that Kodak 
recently sold its digital imaging patents for $525 million and then 
pulled a Polaroid by licensing the Kodak brand name to Los 
Angeles-based JK Imaging for consumer products such as digital cameras, 
pocket video cameras, and portable projectors (having shuttered the 
Kodak digital cameras business last year), as it moves to focus on B2B 
commercial imaging. The business units involved in the KPP deal are 
personalized imaging, which includes retail photo kiosks and dry lab 
systems, photographic paper and workflow solutions, still-camera film 
products, and ?event imaging solutions,? which allows theme parks to 
sell garishly framed souvenir photos to queasy, 
fresh-off-the-rollercoaster types. The deal will also divest Kodak of 
its document imaging business, a line of scanners, software, and 
professional services."

On a personal note, I have sent my long, long, dry and academic book on 
Behavioral Science in International Business off to the publisher and 
can now rejoin the living. It has been over three years in the writing. 
I never want to read another academic journal again.

Larry Z