April 20, 2007 – Rohm and Haas Co. has agreed to acquire Kodak’s light management films business, which produces films to improve brightness and efficiency of LCDs, for an undisclosed amount. Rohm & Haas’ electronic materials unit is expected to take on all employees of the business, which has operations in Rochester, NY, as well as overseas offices in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and China.

The deal “is an exciting first step in building our flat-panel display technologies business,” noted Yi Hyon Paik, VP and business group director, Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials. He noted Kodak’s display films have made initial inroads into Asia — “the technology pipeline is deep and well positioned to meet emerging display requirements, especially in the fast-growing LCD TV market,” he said in a statement.

Pierre Brondeau, EVP in the company’s electronic materials and specialty materials group, noted this is the first stage of the “Vision 2010” initiative, launched last year, to accelerate and invest in growth and improve profitability. “We have pledged to aggressively grow our Electronic Materials business over the next several years, and this acquisition is the first of many steps we’re pursuing to meet that objective,” he stated.

The Kodak technology, placed as one of several layers in a typical LCD application, randomly arranges millions of individual lenses on a polycarbonate film to improve brightness, color consistency, and viewing angle, as well as reduce moire interference patterns.