Rochester Photo News

tomalophicon said:

Don't you guys in the US have state-funded retirement pensions?

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We have federally funded Social Security. This is in addition to our own pension granted by the company and our own savings which include the Savings and Investment Plan sponsored by Kodak. For healthcare we get company benefits and Medicare and Medicaid. It is the company portion that may vanish.

Depending on age and date of retirement, some of us will lose benefits and others will not.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

We have federally funded Social Security. This is in addition to our own pension granted by the company and our own savings which include the Savings and Investment Plan sponsored by Kodak. For healthcare we get company benefits and Medicare and Medicaid. It is the company portion that may vanish.

Depending on age and date of retirement, some of us will lose benefits and others will not.

PE

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Yes, we DO have Social Security starting at 65, which may or may not be enough to live on, it depends on how much you made and contributed during your working life. I will get $650 month when I turn 65. We do have Medicare that kicks in for health insurance at 65, but that only pays a portion of your doctor billls. For the balance, you're on your own. Some larger companies have retirement plans that pay out a nice check every month when you retire, but being self-employed I won't see any of that, and PE may see that end. There is no state retirement, unless you are a career employee of a state.

Thanks, much like our system, but the retirement funds paid for by the companies we work for go into a central fund known as superannuation funds. It means we can move around to an infinite number of companies and still have the money going into the fund.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia

tomalophicon said:

Thanks, much like our system, but the retirement funds paid for by the companies we work for go into a central fund known as superannuation funds. It means we can move around to an infinite number of companies and still have the money going into the fund.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia

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Yes. A lot of eyes are on the Oz system as it came about in part because of a collapse in private pension plans and their underlying reliance on long-term public company revenues.

The Kodak pension plan at this time is apparently fully funded for most people. However, Kodak had a multitude of plans and it depends on what plan you selected and what year. And, you can retire at 59 1/2, but Federal law says that if you retire earlier, you cannot get any pension or you will pay a tax penalty.

So, one rule does not fit all.

PE

My father (35+ years with Kodak Canada) is looking at no longer having paid for him:

1) our provincial Medical Service Plan premiums (now $118.00 per month for my father and mother), and
2) his premiums for his "extended health benefits" (dental, additional treatments like physiotherapy, and prescriptions).

There are other government programs that will contribute to the costs that are currently paid by his extended health benefits, once certain limits are reached.

His pension is fully funded, and isolated from the bankruptcy.

Photo Engineer said:

The Kodak pension plan at this time is apparently fully funded for most people.

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Wow! I'm shocked. The spirit of George Eastman lives on. Most company pension plans are so underfunded it borders on the criminal. I know mine is.

Ed

Another take on Kodak's situation comes from a former EK man who ran their Australian operation for a number of years. Switkowski is a nuclear physicist by training but has made his name in various CEO and company director roles. This article appeared today in our national newspaper "The Australian" and I'd like to have just posted a link to it but unfortunately it is behind a paywall and I doubt that many folk in the US would have a sub to an Aussie paper. OzJohn


THE print media and telecommunications industries have crucial lessons to learn from the demise of Eastman Kodak, according to Ziggy Switkowski, the former boss of the camera maker's local operations.
Dr Switkowski, who worked at Eastman Kodak from 1978 to 1996 and was the chairman and chief executive of its Australasian operations from 1992 to 1996, believes the print and telco industries could face a similar fate unless they can divorce themselves from the declining margins of their legacy operations and instead adapt to the increasingly digitised era of business.
"It's hard to move from a high market share, high-revenue legacy business, into a new capital-intensive world where you have to compete for market share in lower margin products," Dr Switkowski, who also spent six years as chief executive of Telstra from 1999 to 2005, told The Australian yesterday.
"To make the call to go into new businesses when your legacy business is in terminal decline is a breathtakingly difficult one to make -- but when your business is in that position, then you must adapt in order to survive."
Dr Switkowski's warnings comes as Eastman Kodak, once a giant of the camera and chemical imaging industry, prepares to seek bankruptcy protection in the US.
The rise and fall of the once proud 131-year-old international company has been one of colossal proportions and contains important lessons for industries on the cusp of transition, according to Dr Switkowski.
He said Kodak's demise was due to the intransigence of the company to adapt to an environment in which it would have to sacrifice the prodigious cashflows from legacy operations and instead adjust to an existence exposed to higher competition and lower margins.
"The problem is that quite often businesses point to the fact that if you can continue to get some sort of return from your legacy investments that have been fully amortised, then the economic returns are still attractive even as you manage a business in decline," he said.
"For them, the economic returns from the alternatives are simply comparatively unattractive."
Dr Switkowski said the print media and telecommunications sectors faced a similar dilemma.
Despite media companies suffering from the long-term decline of printed newspapers and telcos battling the deterioration of fixed-line telephony revenues, both industries have shown a stubbornness to relinquish these businesses, he said.
"Instead of diverting the bulk of resources to emergent and disruptive technologies, they have instead tried simply to delay the inevitable shift to new platforms," Dr Switkowski said.
"Kodak's biggest failing was not identifying that the future of the high-margin chemical imaging business was going to end. You had a company whose leaders were all from that side of the house and whose strategy was to optimise returns ultimately for a business that would become extinct.
"There are similar examples of this in the telco and media industries. Good management will always manage terminal decline, but terminal decline will always decline. Anything that isn't fully digitised is at risk and examples like Kodak and its old hard-copy image business show that people will not continue to value old businesses like they once did, because people are increasingly comfortable with the online and digital world now."

Photo Engineer said:

The Kodak pension plan at this time is apparently fully funded for most people. However, Kodak had a multitude of plans and it depends on what plan you selected and what year. And, you can retire at 59 1/2, but Federal law says that if you retire earlier, you cannot get any pension or you will pay a tax penalty.

So, one rule does not fit all.

PE

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This article does not seem to think so:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sell-kodak-before-theyre-bankrupt-2012-01-06

Rich;

Again it depends on the "plan" that you have for retirement from EK. The article is correct for recent employees, but some employees are "grandfathered" and are protected in a variety of ways. For instance the SIP plan I mentioned is protected, but not considered part of the retirement plan nor do some employees choose to take part in it.

So, the article is correct but limited in scope.

Thanks for posting this.

PE

No noticeable run on film sales....
http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/kodak-eastman-kodak-kodak-bankruptcy-nikon/1/6/2012/id/38719

zsas said:

No noticeable run on film sales....
http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/kodak-eastman-kodak-kodak-bankruptcy-nikon/1/6/2012/id/38719

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I recently conducted a one-person run on film but nobody in the blogosphere asked me about it.

(And this, just before I learned I was getting from a relative a belated Christmas gift of 40 rolls of Tri-X.)

s-a

zsas said:

No noticeable run on film sales....
http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/kodak-eastman-kodak-kodak-bankruptcy-nikon/1/6/2012/id/38719

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Yeah and he mentions the new Nikon D4. I saw in the B&H email I got the side of which is covered with ports....even a headphone jack port! Man, wish my Rolleiflex 2.8E Planar had a headphone jack port!

Another restructure, I wonder if the two divisions get to fight over using Building 38...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/10/us-kodak-idUSTRE80913I20120110?type=companyNews

"..... , the company's commercial and consumer segments are absorbing the businesses that now sit in the Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment group. That group's head will move over to the newly named commercial business.

The Commercial Segment will include the graphic communications group, as well as take on the entertainment imaging and commercial film businesses.

The consumer business will include the consumer digital imaging group, as well as businesses from the old film and photofinishing unit, including paper and output systems, event imaging solutions and the consumer film and intellectual property business."

Today at a photo/electronics show, Kodak unveiled several new products showing that R&D is not dead in digital at least.

PE

I used to work for an electronic equipment manufacturer. Chucking another product out the door from a base of similar products isn't that difficult. Since Perez wants to make a future in consumer digital devices, I'd be surprised if Kodak didn't have something at CES.

Surprisingly, my sources tell me that Fuji is absent from the show for the first time!

PE

Photo Engineer said:

Surprisingly, my sources tell me that Fuji is absent from the show for the first time!

PE

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Nope, Fuji is there with the biggest announcement in the industry:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-09/reviewed-ces-fujifilm-xpro1/52471364/1

I'll check it out then, thanks.

It may be another show as my information relates to there being no Fuji booth.

PE

Aristophanes said:

Nope, Fuji is there with the biggest announcement in the industry:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-09/reviewed-ces-fujifilm-xpro1/52471364/1

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Wow!

It's buzz-worthy!
It's a bold new move!
It has a new mount! AKA: Your current lenses won't work! AND there's no zoom yet so buy all three primes!
It has a stylish, retro metal chassis that's rangefinder-ish, so people will think you bought a Leica!
It's thousands of dollars cheaper than a Leica, so you can get it RIGHT! NOW! (while you save up money for that Leica you really want.)

Once the industry realized Joe Blow really would buy a $5k camera the Prosumer niche was born and the floodgates opened. This bodes well for all used-market buyers: Analog and digital alike.

s-a

Aristophanes said:

Nope, Fuji is there with the biggest announcement in the industry:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-09/reviewed-ces-fujifilm-xpro1/52471364/1

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I don't get it. You can buy for $/E 1700 a pretty recently CLAed Leica, throw in a couple of excellent Voigtlander lenses and still have money for lots of film. And by the way, that $1700 piece of gear will become obsolete in a few years.

Actually, this new line of Fuji digital cameras are kind of attractive. Some of them actually offer a dial that lets you manually set an aperture!

I have to correct myself.

Fuji will not be represented at the PPA convention, but Kodak will. Also, there is some doubt if Fuji will be present at the Wedding Photographers Meeting later this year.

I am still researching this, but the first absence of Fuji from the PPA is the major item here. (If correct)

PE

It is a shame someone could not come out with something like this that would allow to dump the guts and insert either a digital or film system so the camera could be digital or film. I applaud the company for concentrating on prime lenses first; something I wish all would do. Rather than kits with zooms, sell the camera body with a decent prime and maybe would not grow up not knowing how a lens can work as well as basic control usage as well as composition.

While the projected price is not inexpensive, it is not all that bad considering it is not much more than an upper crust dslr. Especially, if the prime lenses are decent.

You can do that with some MF and LF cameras.

Just change backs.

PE