Corporate Restructuring

Eastman Kodak Co., struggling against poor profit and high debt, Tuesday took a big step in its corporate restructuring, announcing that it will divest Eastman Chemical Co. and in one fell swoop wipe out $2 billion of debt. Such a spinoff would not have occurred just a few years ago, analysts said, and the move signals that Chief Executive Kay R. Whitmore is responding to new, tougher markets and stockholder pressure to improve financial results quickly.

Mall developer Mills Corp. announced Thursday that it had hired financial advisors to explore a possible sale of the company and is cutting jobs as part of a corporate restructuring. The restructuring will result in the loss of 77 jobs. The company -- which owns 42 properties in the U.S., Canada and Europe, including the Block at Orange and Del Amo Fashion Center -- employs about 1,100. The Arlington, Va.

TouchStone Software Corp. Will pay its president and chief executive, Kenneth S. Forbes III, $205,000 this year to turn around the struggling Huntington Beach maker of computer diagnostic software. Since Forbes' arrival in August, the company has cut 11 people from its staff, reducing total employment to 21. The layoffs have been part of a continual downsizing and refocusing for the company, which had 58 employees in September 1997. TouchStone's former CEO, Lawrence S.

Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., the world's largest health-care company, on Wednesday disclosed a corporate restructuring timetable, set a big stock buyback and posted quarterly results in line with forecasts. The Nashville-based company also said it will probably change its name, though not soon. It said it expects continued "substantial costs" from restructuring and a massive Medicare fraud probe the federal government began 18 months ago.

President Bush's eldest son sold $848,560 of his stock in a Texas company just before the share prices began to plunge because of poor earnings reports, according to U.S. News & World Report. The magazine says that, at the time of the sale last June 22, George W. Bush was a member of a committee formed by the Dallas-based Harken Energy Co. to study the likely effects of a corporate restructuring.

Even though it hurts, the nation's corporate restructuring is ushering in better economic times, said T. Boone Pickens, Texas oilman, corporate raider and a founder of the shareholder rights movement. He spoke in Costa Mesa on Thursday morning to a group of about 250 people attending a forum on leading public companies. "The '80s won't be remembered as a decade of greed; it will be remembered as the decade of the shareholder rights movement," Pickens told his audience.

RCA Corp., the parent company of NBC, among other operations, said it lost $24 million on its continuing operations but posted a 20% increase in its net earnings to $93.9 million as a result of corporate restructuring. The restructuring included the sale of Hertz Corp. to UAL Inc. in August for $587.5 million in cash. RCA said its net income for the three months ended Sept. 30 was $93.9 million, up from $78 million in the same period a year earlier. It said revenue increased to $2.

Freeman Rose, who helped to build a device that disintegrates kidney stones without surgery, resigned Monday as chief executive of Medstone International Inc. to return to the creative field of developing new biotechnology products, the Irvine company said. Rose, a company founder, will remain as chairman. Richard Ferrari, who joined the company in April as president and chief operating officer, will take over as chief executive.

Times Mirror said Thursday that it will sell its Los Angeles-based directory printing business to a unit of GTE as part of a corporate restructuring. The price for Times Mirror Press wasn't disclosed, although a spokeswoman for GTE Directories Corp. said that it will be an all-cash purchase. GTE is a longtime customer of Times Mirror Press. The deal is subject to signing of a definitive contract and is expected to be completed in January.

Struggling to cope with depressed world crude prices, Unocal Corp. said Thursday that it would shrink its Orange County work force by as much as 7% over the next six months. The international petroleum and chemical products giant said that "changing market conditions" have forced it to scale down its research and development facilities in Brea and Anaheim, a move that will eliminate between 50 and 100 jobs.