America’s Worst Directors: Richard Braddock Of Eastman Kodak

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Richard Braddock has been a director of Eastman Kodak since 1987.  The CEO of internet grocer Fresh Direct and former top Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) executive has held the job as the once important American company became a shell of its former self. He has served as the presiding director of Kodak and as a member of its Executive Compensation and Development Committee.

Eastman Kodak’s stock has fallen from $67 the year Braddock joined the company to its current price of just over $4.

Braddock was also around when current CEO Antonio M. Perez was hired in 2003 and elevated to the chief executive’s job in 2005.

Kodak’s revenue has fallen sharply from $14 billion in 2000 when the company made a net profit of $1.7 billion. In 2010, revenue was $7.187 billion, a 6% decrease from the 2009. Kodak posted a net loss of $70 million for 2010. The news pushed the shares down 10%.  The company’s stock dropped 71 cents, or 14%, to $4.51 on January 25 after Kodak  received an initial determination that its patent infringement claim it made with the International Trade Commission against Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) is not valid.

Perez was well rewarded by his failure as Braddock and other directors paid him $12.6 million in total compensation in 2009 and more than $30 million between 2007 and 2009.

Braddock is Kodak’s longest serving director. As such, he bears great deal of responsibility for the company’s failures, not the least of which is the ongoing employment of Perez and his handsome compensation.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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