Slimmed-down Kodak emerges from bankruptcy Eastman Kodak has won court approval to emerge from bankruptcy, signalling an end to the 19-month period of insolvency that tarnished one of corporate America's most renowned success stories. A bankruptcy court in New York cleared the company's reorganisation plan on Tuesday after dismissing the remaining objections from a number of pensioners and shareholders. Judge Allan Gropper called Kodak's decline and bankruptcy "a tragedy of American economic life" that would lead to many pensioners losing retirement benefits and leave the company's creditors with only "a minute fraction" of what they were owed. Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2012 after a long-running attempt to remake its analogue film business for the digital age ended in failure. After cutting costs, shedding large parts of its operations and selling patents while in bankruptcy, the new, slimmed-down Kodak will focus on corporate customers rather than the consumer markets for which it was better known over more than a century of business history. The new company will be much "leaner and nimbler" and will still have some of the intellectual property and expertise that once made it a world-class business, though it also faces the cultural challenge of moving much faster than the old Kodak, said Mark Zupan, dean of the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester. One of the new company's markets, selling film to the movie industry, is set to contract by around a third by 2017, while the commercial printing and packaging market is "highly competitive and their [market] share is small," Mr Zupan added. Kodak's traditional camera film business is set to be handed to its UK pensioners as part of a settlement of their claims on the company. Representatives for the UK pension plan put their claim at $2.8bn during the bankruptcy, giving them one of the loudest voices in determining the outcome. Kodak eventually agreed to hand over both its personal imaging business, which includes its camera film and photo-kiosk operations, as well as its document-printing business to the UK pensioners. The value of the company's shares will be wiped out in the reorganisation, with much of the ownership in the new company passing to a group of creditors. Under the deal approved by the court, the group will receive 85 per cent of the new company's stock, valued at around $400m.