In mid-August, as Kodak’s $765 million government-backed push into drug manufacturing slowly fell apart in national headlines, Ginkgo Bioworks CEO Jason Kelly got a message from his company’s government liaison: HHS wanted to know if they, too, might want a loan.
Eastman Kodak's pharma ambitions took a hit when insider trading accusations put $765 million in U.S. funding on the skids. But a special committee hired by Kodak's board has now cleared its top brass of wrongdoing—a decision that could clear its path into drug manufacturing.
A planned $765 million U.S. loan for Eastman Kodak Co. to produce drug ingredients is under review by the inspector general of the agency that helped put together the deal.
With a suite of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics on their way to market, the U.S. government has been working to secure enough manufacturing capacity to meet demand. Now, the Army will pay big money to a Florida CDMO to snare millions of potential doses.
The curious story of Kodak’s pivot to pharma
Eastman Kodak’s $765 million government loan to boost pharmaceutical manufacturing capacities was put on hold just last week, and now reports of a well-timed charitable donation have come to light.
The Trump administration’s $765 million government loan given to Eastman Kodak under the Defense Production Act raises suspicions for a number of reasons, not least of which is the company’s reported plan to use the funds to manufacture ingredients for the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine. Kodak, a once-prominent photography company, has virtually no recent experience manufacturing pharmaceuticals; however, according to public lobbying data, Kodak invested a massive amount in lobbying the administration during the second quarter of 2020—precisely when the loan was being negotiated with the government.
(Reuters) - Eastman Kodak Co’s $765 million loan agreement with the U.S. government to produce pharmaceutical ingredients has been put on hold due to “recent allegations of wrongdoing,” the U.S. International Development Finance Corp (DFC) said.
When CureVac initially jotted down $100 million for its IPO raise a couple of weeks ago, it seemed small. The German mRNA player, after all, had jumped into a Covid-19 race that swelled the sails of Moderna and BioNTech by tens of billions. And after raising $640 million in a slate of deals, $100 million in a hot market like this seemed like a pittance in the bigger scheme of things.