Eastman Kodak Co. has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy with its employee pension plans intact.
The film company ended its 20-month bankruptcy proceeding without making changes to or eliminating benefits for nearly 63,000 people covered by its two pension plans.
The company worked with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. to ensure that the plans would continue. It came out of bankruptcy as a leaner company focused on commercial imaging, like packaging and graphics, for business markets.
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Increased competition in the digital realm and the falling interest rates brought on by the financial crisis of 2008 left some of the company's pension obligations underfunded. It was those costs and others that led the company to file for bankruptcy in January 2012.
The company's revenue dropped from about $13.3 billion in 2003 to $6 billion in 2011.
Under Chapter 11 reorganization, Kodak reduced costs, businesses and workers. It closed its consumer camera business and sold an online photo service. It also spun off its personal and document imaging businesses to the U.K. Kodak Pension Plan, which wiped out a $2.8 billion pension obligation. The pension plan will sell the business and use the proceeds to fund its retirement benefits.
The company now has only about 8,500 employees, well below the 145,000 it had in the 1980s, and its executives expect the company will be profitable moving forward.
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