Carestream bags six lawyers from former parent Kodak

Kodak spin-off Carestream Health has taken six former Kodak lawyers to set up its European in-house team.

The photographic company sold its healthcare group to US private equity house Onex in January. Onex then acquired a team of six in-house lawyers from Kodak, including Nicholas Brown, who has taken the role of chief of European legal counsel at Carestream.

Brown said: "We're still working through the integration process. Carestream still has a number of connections with Kodak, such as IT support. At the moment we need to focus on becoming fully independent. We're still working on complete separation for the new company."

Carestream's legal function now has presences in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Israel.

Brown, who worked for the Kodak group for 10 years, now reports to the global head of legal at Onex in the US and is responsible for the Europe, Middle East and Africa legal function.

The legal department is fully functional, but Brown said there will be changes and that the team may expand into other jurisdictions. "We may have to fill in the gaps in some jurisdictions. For example, we don't have a legal presence in Russia, so this might be something we'll look at developing," he said.

While US firm Kaye Scholer advised Onex on the acquisition of Carestream and CMS Cameron McKenna was instructed by Kodak, the new company will be establishing its own relationships with firms over the coming year.

Brown said: "We'd like to keep the number of external law firms used to a minimum and I'd ideally like most issues to be dealt with in-house."