A worker cleans a Kodak booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center in preparation for the 2019 CES in Las Vegas on Jan. 6, 2019.Steve Marcus/Reuters
Eastman Kodak’s potentially lucrative deal to help the U.S. government make more generic drugs domestically is threatening to turn into a regulatory headache for the fallen photography giant.
Kodak’s depressed stock price surged last week before the company announced its plans to work with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in exchange for a US$765-million loan. That prompted Senator Elizabeth Warren to send a Monday letter asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether insider-trading laws have been broken.
The SEC is now in the early stages of a probe, according to a report published Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper cited unidentified people familiar with the matter.
The SEC declined to comment on the report.
Kodak said Tuesday that the Rochester, N.Y., company intends to co-operate with any potential inquiries, without saying whether it has been contacted by the SEC.
The company’s stock soared on the July 28 news about the US$765-million loan from the federal government to help Kodak make factory changes necessary to make pharmaceutical ingredients in short supply in the U.S. Its shares rocketed from around US$2 to as high as US$60 before some of its former debt was converted into stock as part of a complex arrangement.
The conversion resulted in Kodak issuing nearly 30 million additional shares, undercutting the value of the stock already outstanding. Kodak’s stock closed at US$14.40 after falling 3.6 per cent in Tuesday’s trading.
Any investigation is likely to focus in an abrupt rally and trading frenzy in Kodak’s stock before the company and the Trump administration made their announcement. The rally may have been triggered by some of the news being shared online on Twitter and websites by at least two reporters in Rochester and two television stations before the official release of the information.
In its Tuesday statement, Kodak said it didn’t intend for the news to be shared by the media in advance.
Ms. Warren, a former Democratic Party presidential candidate from Massachusetts, also asked the SEC to look into whether Kodak board members were buying stock in the company while they were secretly negotiating the loan with the Trump administration.
After the news of the deal came out, Kodak also disclosed in regulatory filings that it had issued stock options to several executives on July 27 before its shares soared. Kodak chief executive officer James Continenza was among the recipients.
Kodak said the stock option grants were approved by shareholders in May and issued July 27 to preserve the value of shares Mr. Continenza had already earned before the dilution triggered by the conversion of old debt.
Although Kodak became world-famous for its inroads in photography before digital technology decimated the market for film, it also has a lesser-known pharmaceutical division. The government loan agreement, which hasn’t been finalized, is supposed to be used to help expand and renovate existing plants in Rochester and St. Paul, Minn.
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