Why Eastman Kodak shares are up 83% this morning

what happened

The former camera film giant shares Eastman Kodak (NYSE: CODEC) It blew out of the gate this morning, rising by 83% before pausing to catch its breath and back up a bit. As of 11:20 AM ET on Wednesday, the stock was still significantly up at 37.8%.

And all because of something Eastman said Kodak.

So what

Such as The Wall Street Journal Reportedly this morning, a committee appointed by the Eastman Kodak Board of Directors to investigate the circumstances surrounding the company’s acceptance of a $ 765 million loan from the US government in July found that Kodak had not violated any laws.

The loan was to help Kodak produce pharmaceutical ingredients to combat the Coronavirus, and it sparked a crowd in Kodak shares – even before the loan was officially announced. The investigation that followed focused on theories that insider trading may have been encouraged by information leakage within the company, and that Kodak may have given stock options to high-level executives prior to the loan announcement, to enable them to capitalize on it. But the special committee, hired by Kodak’s Akin Gump law firm, found no such wrongdoing.

What now

But there is still the issue of federal investigations in the company. Just yesterday, for example, magazine You mentioned that the Inspector General of the US International Development Finance Corporation (IDFC) is opening a loan review. This is on top of ongoing investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and various congressional committees.

There is no guarantee that these other investigations will reach the same conclusions as the Kodak investigation. Meanwhile, IDFC has stopped paying the loan amount to Kodak, and the funds are unlikely to be released until these other investigations are concluded.