Kodak in Deal to Hand Units to U.K. Retirees
Eastman Kodak Co. reached a deal to turn over the camera-film business that helped make it a blue-chip company and other enterprises to U.K. retirees in exchange for wiping out pension obligations, said people familiar with the matter, in a deal that sets the stage for the onetime photography icon to emerge from bankruptcy proceedings later this year.
Under the contours of the deal, Kodak will hand over to the U.K. Kodak Pension Plan, its largest creditor, its “personalized imaging” and “document imaging” businesses, the people said. The pensioners will then be able to either run the businesses or sell them as they see fit. Kodak will no longer owe the pensioners $2.8 billion, a large sum that threatened to complicate the Rochester, N.Y., company’s efforts to reorganize, the people said.
