Kodak files for bankruptcy, secures financing

11:26 PM bankruptcy, files, financing, Kodak, secures No Comments

Eastman Kodak Co, which invented the handheld camera and helped bring the world the first pictures from the moon, has filed for bankruptcy protection, capping a prolonged plunge for what remains one of America's best-known companies.

The 130-year-old photographic film pioneer, which had tried to restructure to become a seller of consumer products like cameras, said it had also obtained a $950 million, 18-month credit facility from Citigroup to keep it going.

The loan and bankruptcy protection from U.S. trade creditors may give Kodak the time it needs to find buyers for some of its 1,100 digital patents, the key to its remaining value, and to reshape its business while continuing to pay its 17,000 workers.

"The board of directors and the entire senior management team unanimously believe that this is a necessary step and the right thing to do for the future of Kodak," Chairman and Chief Executive Antonio M. Perez said in a statement.

"Now we must complete the transformation by further addressing our cost structure and effectively monetizing non-core intellectual-property assets. We look forward to working with our stakeholders to emerge a lean, world-class, digital imaging and materials science company," he added.

Kodak said that it and its U.S. subsidiaries had filed for Chapter 11 business reorganization in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Non-U.S. subsidiaries were not covered by the filing, it added.

Kodak once dominated its industry and its film was the subject of a popular Paul Simon song, but it failed to quickly embrace more modern technologies such as the digital camera -- ironically, a product it even invented.

Its downfall has already hit its Rust Belt hometown of Rochester, N.Y., with employment there falling to about 7,000 from more than 60,000 in Kodak's halcyon days.

In recent years, Perez has steered Kodak's focus more toward consumer and commercial printers.

But that failed to restore annual profitability, something Kodak has not seen since 2007, or arrest a cash drain that has made it difficult for Kodak to meet its substantial pension and other benefits obligations to its workers and retirees.

Perez said bankruptcy protection would enable Kodak to continue to work to maximize the value of its technology assets, such as digital-imaging patents it licenses for use in mobile and other devices and its printing technology.

Kodak said it was being advised by investment bank Lazard Ltd, which has been helping Kodak look for a buyer for its 1,100 digital patents.

Other advisers included business-turnaround specialist FTI Consulting Inc, whose vice chairman, Dominic DiNapoli, would serve as chief restructuring officer for Kodak, supporting existing management.

Kodak stock, which traded over $5 a year ago, closed Wednesday at 55 cents a share on the New York Stock Exchange, where it had been in danger of being delisted.

Kodak struggles to reinvent itself in digital age

Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters.

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WEEE! 'Angry Birds' lands $ 42 million financing

4:23 AM Angry, Birds, financing, lands, million No Comments

Many eggs can buy FRANKFURT $ 42 million.

Angry birds played ubiquitous app obsession of 40 million people around the world raised to expand that amount from investors, mobile and social networking markets.

"This investment will be Rovio wings," said Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom, who was named to the Board of Directors of Rovio, developer of the game. "Angry birds is one of the fastest growing online products that I grow more rapidly than Skype, seen, and the company has a brilliant work expand on different platforms and merchandise done."

Led the financing round from Accel Partners, which previously was Facebook, AdMob and Baidu and Zennstrom of the venture capital firm Atomico ventures has supported, Rovio said on Thursday. Angel Investor Felicis ventures was also involved.

Rovio will in markets including mobile, social media and other platforms expand and merchandising and media production, and partnerships, it said.

"Angry birds will continue to grow and we want to create more similar success stories", said Mikael HED, CEO and co-founder.

HED in August he planned told of Reuters the birds into a full-fledged entertainment brand in the way Walt Disney Pixar Inc. conducted story and monsters, with characters from toy turn angry

Angry birds-in which players must help to destroy birds, pigs the eggs, with the help of a spinning-stole has remain new ground in the mobile gaming broken at the top of the charts, in contrast to the most mobile game delusions.

She is played by 40 million monthly active users, Rovio said.

More than 75 million paid and ad supported versions downloaded. Vary revenue share and revenue per copy, the company said.

Rovio said in August it for 100 million downloads over the next year or two with the aim of the birds is applied.

Rovio was after three students including Niklas Hed--Mikael's cousin and now Rovio's COO--a game development competition sponsored by Nokia OYJ, Hewlett-Packard CO winning created in 2003. In 2005 it changed its name from Relude.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Critics: Chocolate, financing Gbagbo of Ivory Coast

9:48 PM Chocolate, Coast, Critics, financing, Gbagbo, Ivory No Comments

JOHANNESBURG - some of the cocoa in this Valentine's day chocolate probably came from a west African country where the man still Office will continue in power for a decade. And activists say that might think consumers twice if you knew unpaid 5 year olds helped produce it.

This year human rights defenders are the world's largest producer the political crisis in Cote d'Ivoire, cocoa, to improve your working practices force utilization add momentum to a continuous campaign of worldwide chocolatiers.

Supporters internationally recognized winner of Cote d'Ivoire of election a cocoa moved ban, in the effort, the established market leader of the United Nations says the November elections to strangle lost Laurent Gbagbo.

"It is clear that the taxes that come from cocoa go directly to hold Gbagbo to power." That is why we called for a ban on exports and it seems to be working, said Patrick Achi, spokesman for international recognized winners Alassane Ouattara, now trying to lead the country out of a hotel.

Years by the "fair trade" consumers already campaigns have chocolate manufacturer agreements to help cocoa supply chain to clean up log forced. But little changed in the ten years since the U.S. Congress passed the Harkin Engel Protocol marketed in the United States introduce "no child slavery" label for chocolate.

Some 1.8 million children aged 5 to 17 work on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast and Ghana produced according to the fourth annual report from Tulane University on behalf of the U.S. Department of labor to monitor progress in the Protocol.

The report says 40 percent of 820,000 children in cocoa in Cote d'Ivoire works are enrolled in school, and paid only about 5% of the Ivorian children for your work.

"These companies incredible profits are preserved during the farmers often really getting pennies", said Emira Woods, Co-Director of foreign policy in focus at the Institute for policy studies, Washington-based think tank.

Campaigns recently have begun, targeting the Hershey Company, because the only major chocolate manufacturers in the world, a commitment to certified cocoa use it little, say activists. Hershey's, but says it is working to improve life in local communities.

"Our focus is on-the-ground programs, to promote sustainable livelihoods in West Africa," said Hershey's spokesman Kirk Saville. "Hershey's support for cocoa communities goes back more than 50 years." "We have helped more productive farming practices that build educational and community resources to develop and to eliminate exploitative labor practices."

But the Tulane University report on child labor on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast and Ghana found achieved chocolatiers, less than 4 percent of the cocoa growing communities in Cote d'Ivoire and less than 14 percent of the communities in Ghana.

"Industry far more invested in programs in Ghana where the worst cases of abuse are less common than in the Ivory Coast," said Timothy Newman, campaign Director of the Washington D.C.-based international labor rights forum.

Newman said children from neighbouring countries Mali and Burkina Faso to Ivorian farms, victims of trafficking are where 40 percent of the world's cocoa.

Ivorian Government statistics show that more than 37,000 children are forced to work according to the U.N. International Labor Organization Alexandre Soho, senior program officer for Africa on the Elimination of child labour.

The industry says it more than a cocoa of certification system has spent $75 million to support the implementation. However, the Tulane study found, local only $5.5 million between 2001 and 2009 and that those in the Ivory Coast only $1.2 million from the industry.

Activists argue that the answer is simple: pay farmers more and you can afford their children to school instead of sending to work. Most children are small family plots, work place, often dangerous tools such as machete wielding and use of dangerous substances such as insecticides.

But critics say that chocolate boycott only hurts farmers and their families who try to earn a living, even if wages not "fair trade" ones.

"The problem from the beginning was that chocolates were hidden large companies behind the Harkin Engel Protocol an entirely voluntary agreement with the is no enforcement mechanism." As a result, you could continuously drag their feet in the responsibility for labor rights violations in your own cocoa supply chains, "said Newman."

"Many of the initiatives that have developed the critical underlying issues within this process never addressed, the serious labor rights abuses as makes low prices leading to cocoa farmers for beans and lack of negotiations, which have small farmers in the global chocolate supply chain paid." "These problems continue to fuel abuse."

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