Word: fisher
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Zoom forward to last week, when Fisher's strategy seemed to be coming a cropper--to say nothing of being in need of cropping. With the company's new computerized camera systems running up hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, and its mainstay 35-mm color film under attack from lower-priced Fuji Photo Film in the U.S. and a strong dollar abroad, Kodak said its 1997 operating earnings could fall as much as 25% below the results for last year. That marked the third distress flag on Kodak earnings this year and caused the company's stock...
...Fisher and legions of increasingly frustrated Kodak investors, the setbacks brought the need for a course correction into painfully sharp focus. Declaring that "we can't live with a continuing deterioration of our profits," Fisher vowed to embark later this year on cost cuts that he had hoped to spare the company. The prospect must have sent chills through the ranks of Kodak's 94,800 workers--including 34,000 in the company town of Rochester, N.Y., which has already weathered past layoffs. "Earlier in the year we thought we could wait out the price situation and the dollar," Fisher...
Losing isn't supposed to happen under the charismatic Fisher, 56, a native of Anna, Ill., who holds a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Brown University and is one of corporate America's highest-profile executives. For leading once sleepy Motorola into the digital age, Fisher is on the short list for many high-profile ceo jobs that become available. He spurned an offer to head IBM before Louis Gerstner took that turnaround job in 1993. More recently, Fisher was widely viewed as a possible successor to AT&T chairman Robert Allen. Perhaps partly to scotch speculation that he might...
...Fisher has had plenty to brag about since his arrival. He shook up Kodak with rigorous pay-for-performance standards and refocused the company by selling off ill-advised acquisitions like drugmaker Sterling Winthrop, thereby cutting Kodak's $8 billion debt burden to a comfortable $1 billion. At the same time, he has greatly accelerated Kodak's once sluggish product-development cycles. "There is no self-doubt as to where the opportunities lie," says company president Daniel Carp, a 27-year Kodak veteran and Fisher's presumed heir. Nor, Carp adds, is there any lack of confidence in Kodak...
...analysts doubt that the effort will ever pay off. The devices (price range: $200 to $900) record images on microchips for computer users. But the field is already glutted with dozens of rivals, from traditional camera makers such as Canon and Nikon to Silicon Valley giants like Hewlett-Packard. Fisher counters that naysayers saw few profits in the 1980s in the business of cellular phones and pagers, which have grown into two of Motorola's most lucrative products. Says he of his record for confounding such doubters: "Been there. Done that...