Kodak Firing 1,000 More Workers By End Of 2012

With Bankruptcy looming and a complete company restructuring underway Kodak on Wednesday announced plans to fire 1,000 additional workers by the end of 2012. Kodak may extend those job losses before years end in order to remain in business.

30 years ago Kodak employed nearly 145,000 employees, a number that has fallen to just 14,700. Recently two upper management employees have existed the company as part of its restructuring plan. Departing Kodas are Chief Financial Officer Antoinette McCorvey and Chief Operating Officer Philip Faraci. In a statement regarding the departure Perez said:

“Kodak is becoming a more focused and competitively scaled company. We recognize that we must significantly and expeditiously reduce our current cost structure, which is designed for a much larger, more diversified set of businesses.”

Perez then added that Kodak is:

“Reorganizing our senior management team, an action that will help accelerate the creation of a sustainable cost structure for operating our business for the benefit of our customers and position our Personalized Imaging and Document Imaging businesses for successful sales.”

Kodak is currently under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections and the company is waiting for the final results from its patent auction with a final hearing scheduled for September 19.

The firm is expected to exit bankruptcy protections by early 2013 should its patent portfolio bring in the $2.5 billion the company is hoping to receive. According to recent reports bids from investors have totaled less than $500 million.

Kodak’s bankruptcy plan called for an exit from protections by early 2013 assuming strong results from a patent auction portfolio expected to be worth upwards of $2.5 billion. Reports from sources familiar with the matter report that the investor groups’ bids for the patents totaled less than $500 million.