In 1985, the South Dakota Investment Council, which is responsible for the investment of financial assets owned by the State of (you guessed it) South Dakota, made an unremarkable decision. It bought $5 million in shares approximately 1,400,000 shares of Eastman Kodak (on a split-adjusted basis), the blue-chip film manufacturer that had a fifty-year track record of delivering 12.1% annual returns.
As we all know, despite the fact that Eastman Kodak was once one of the most dominant business entities in the entire history of the United States, it lost nearly all of its market share as the world embraced digital photography and sales of photographic film shriveled to nothing. The company’s failure to establish a meaningful position in the world of digital photography (or any alternative) ultimately resulted in Kodak filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a New York federal court on January 19, 2012.
The South Dakota Investment Council … Read the rest of this article!