Business

Getty Images files for Chapter 11 in plan to go private

The stock-photo group lists assets and liabilities of $1 billion to $10 billion. Affiliates of the Getty family and Koch Equity Development will put in up to $533 million and own the company once it leaves bankruptcy, expected by the end of the year.

ScrollBeat DeskPublished: 22 Oct 2026, 20:28Updated: 22 Oct 2026, 20:28

The Getty Images office on Eastcastle Street in London, photographed in October 2015. Philafrenzy / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Getty Images filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a Delaware court on Wednesday, a step the photo agency says is needed to cut its debt and take the company private again.

The case is prepackaged, meaning the main creditor groups have already agreed to the outline of the restructuring. Getty announced the plan on 12 October and has now begun asking creditors to vote formally for it. In its filing, the company listed both its assets and its liabilities in the $1 billion to $10 billion range.

Under the deal, affiliates of the Getty family and Koch Equity Development will invest up to $533 million of new equity and will own 100 per cent of the company once it emerges. Koch Equity Development has also committed up to $143 million of financing to keep the business running through the process.

Debt holders have agreed to give up a large slice of what they are owed. Holders representing 83.5 per cent of Getty's unsecured notes will retire $270 million of senior unsecured notes, while lenders holding about 89 per cent of the secured bonds and term loans have agreed to lower interest payments and push back repayment dates.

Getty says the business will keep operating normally and that photographers, partners, customers, employees and vendors should not be affected. A company spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter that layoffs are not part of the plan.

"This transformational transaction is underpinned by the strength of the business and the significant growth potential we see ahead," said Mark Getty, co-founder and chairman of the board. He thanked Koch Equity Development and the lender groups for what he called capital structure improvements that would let the company build on its foundation.

Chief executive Craig Peters said the company's customers, partners, staff and contributors, and the depth of its archive, were the pillars of the business. Mike Harris, senior managing director and co-head of Koch Equity Development, said the investment would give Getty "a firm financial foundation and greater flexibility" to keep investing.

Getty was founded in London in 1995 by Mark Getty and Jonathan Klein and grew into one of the largest suppliers of news, sport and entertainment photography, selling licences to newspapers, broadcasters, advertisers and digital publishers around the world. Koch Equity Development has been a backer since 2018, when it made a $500 million preferred equity investment.

The immediate trigger for the restructuring was the collapse of Getty's planned $3.7 billion merger with rival Shutterstock. The deal was announced in January 2025 but was abandoned in late June after Britain's Competition and Markets Authority said Shutterstock would have to sell its editorial business, a condition Getty's board treated as a deal-breaker. Peters later said the company had spent more than $100 million on professional fees and financing costs pursuing the transaction.

The failed merger landed on top of older problems. Getty has carried heavy debt while its creative stock business, including the iStock platform, faced falling demand. In an investor presentation this month, the company pointed to "declining agency demand and disruption" in that e-commerce business, and its chief financial officer said annual subscribers had fallen from 321,000 to 241,000 over the year. Getty still expects its core editorial division, which supplies news images, to grow from $369 million to $400 million by 2029.

The company had already missed an interest payment due on 1 September on its unsecured notes and entered a 30-day grace period. According to the New York Post, Getty said it had the cash to make the payment but chose to restructure instead.

Several questions remain open. The company expects to finish the process by the end of the year, but that depends on creditors voting for the plan and the court approving it, and bankruptcy timetables often slip. Getty has not said what holders of its public shares will receive; they are not part of the new ownership group. It has also given no detail on whether licensing prices or contributor contract terms will change after the restructuring, beyond saying that customers and contributors will not be affected.

For newsrooms outside the United States, including outlets in Bangladesh that license agency photography, the filing is a change of ownership at a supplier rather than a disruption to service. Getty's images appear daily in newspapers and websites worldwide, and any interruption would be felt quickly. The company says there will be none. Still, the case is worth watching for anyone whose work depends on editorial picture agencies, because consolidation and cost pressure in that industry affect what newsrooms can buy and at what price.

Getty's next steps are procedural. Creditors will vote on the reorganisation plan, a judge will review the result, and if all goes as the company hopes, the agency will leave Chapter 11 before 2027 as a privately held business owned by the Getty family and Koch. It would be the second time the company has gone private, after more than a decade off public markets before its 2022 listing.

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Getty Images files for bankruptcy amid mounting debt and AI competition Getty Images to File for Bankruptcy, Go Private in Restructuring Deal

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NEXT STORY Culture & Society

Two stray dogs bite 27 people in two days in Cumilla's Barura

The upazila health complex treated 13 patients on Wednesday night and 14 more on Thursday morning, its acting resident medical officer said. Officials have not said whether the dogs were rabid or whether they have been caught.

ScrollBeat Desk22 Oct 2026, 21:37Open this article

A stray dog rests on a paved street in Dhaka in this file photo. Health officials say stray-dog bites and rabies cases have risen across Bangladesh. Fabian Roudra Baroi / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Two dogs bit 27 people in two days in Barura municipality in Cumilla district, the upazila health complex said, in an episode that has renewed concern about stray dogs and rabies across Bangladesh.

The attacks began at about 9pm on Wednesday in Noyontola, Pathanpara and Dewatli, three neighbourhoods of the municipality. Thirteen people were treated at Barura Upazila Health Complex between 10pm and 11:30pm. Fourteen more came in between 9am and noon on Thursday, after the dogs moved through the same areas again.

Dr Mujahidul Islam, the health complex's acting resident medical officer, confirmed the two-day count and the timing of the two waves. He said he had been told the injuries were caused by two rabid dogs. The hospital did not say whether any patient was referred to Cumilla Medical College Hospital or whether anyone was admitted.

A second official gave a slightly different account earlier in the day. Dr Reza Sarwar, the upazila health and family planning officer, said 22 to 25 injured people reached the hospital within about two hours on Thursday morning. If the bites came from rabid dogs, he said, the injuries could put lives at risk. He added that it was not clear why so many people had been bitten in such a short time and that the matter needed investigation. He said he would write to the local administration asking it to act.

Residents of the three areas said they were worried about children and older people, bd24live reported. The health complex is the first stop for bite patients in the upazila. Officials did not say on Thursday whether the facility had enough anti-rabies vaccine for the people treated, or how many had started the full course of shots.

Rabies is the immediate concern after any dog bite. The disease is almost always fatal once symptoms appear, which is why doctors treat exposure as an emergency rather than waiting for signs of illness. Bangladesh has recorded a rising number of animal-bite patients at its main referral hospital in Dhaka: 94,380 in 2023, 122,263 in 2024 and 146,243 in 2025, according to figures from the Infectious Diseases Hospital. Rabies deaths rose from 42 in 2023 to 58 in 2024 and 59 in 2025, with 19 recorded in the first two and a half months of 2026, the hospital's data shows.

The increase has coincided with the weakening of the national programme meant to suppress it. A coordinated effort begun in 2010 combined dog vaccination, birth control, public awareness and prompt treatment for bite victims, and the Directorate General of Health Services says nearly 2.9 million dogs were vaccinated across more than 60 districts. Officials involved in disease control say the programme has effectively stopped since the political change of 2024, with no funding for new vaccination or sterilisation rounds.

"We are preparing a new plan to prevent rabies. However, under this plan, only humans will be vaccinated," said Professor Md Halimur Rashid, director of the disease control division at the DGHS. "At this moment, there is no plan to vaccinate dogs or to control the dog population." In Dhaka, the south city corporation sterilised about 150 dogs in roughly 20 months, against more than 500 a year before 2024, its veterinary officer said.

Barura is not an isolated case. On 11 October, a stray dog bit 28 people over about three hours in three villages of Mithapukur upazila in Rangpur. All were treated and given anti-rabies vaccine at the upazila health complex, and one was referred to Rangpur Medical College Hospital, according to the complex's resident medical officer. The World Health Organization says an area can be freed of dog-mediated rabies if at least 70 per cent of its dogs are vaccinated for three consecutive years.

For Barura, several things remain unknown. No official has said whether the two dogs were tested for rabies, whether they have been caught or removed, or how the municipality plans to deal with the stray population in the three neighbourhoods. The upazila administration has not said when it will act on the health officer's request.

What happens next will be watched closely in a district where the health complex, rather than a veterinary team, ends up treating the consequences. Rabies can be prevented if exposed people receive post-exposure treatment promptly, health officials say. The practical questions for Barura are whether the dogs are found before they bite again, and whether the people already bitten complete their course of vaccine.

NEXT STORY Bangladesh

Coast Guard finds 50,000 yaba pills in a floating sack on the Naf river

Smugglers abandoned their boat and fled when a Coast Guard team closed in near Shahpori island in Teknaf. The pills are worth about Tk 2.5 crore, and no one has been arrested.

ScrollBeat Desk22 Oct 2026, 21:35Open this article

The Naf river at Teknaf, Cox's Bazar, the border river where the Coast Guard seized about 50,000 yaba pills from a floating sack on 21 October 2026. File photo of the river, not the seizure. Zeesan Chowdhury, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Bangladesh Coast Guard recovered about 50,000 yaba pills from a sack floating in the Naf river beside Shahpori island in Teknaf, Cox's Bazar, after the crew of a wooden boat fled a patrol late on Wednesday night. The force put the value of the pills at about Tk 2.5 crore.

The Shahpori outpost moved on a tip-off at about 11pm, Coast Guard media officer Lieutenant Commander Sabbir Alam Sujan said on Thursday morning. Officers signalled a wooden engine boat near Nazirpara, on the river beside the island, to stop for a search. The people on board realised the Coast Guard was there and escaped, leaving the boat and the water behind them.

A search of the area then turned up a sack floating near the spot. Inside were bundles of yaba, the methamphetamine-and-caffeine tablet that dominates the cross-border drug trade in this part of the country. Coast Guard officers opened the wrapping on their boat and laid the blue packets out beside a sign recording the count for the official photograph released with the seizure.

Nobody was arrested. The Coast Guard did not name a suspect, did not say whether it had identified the owner of the abandoned boat, and did not say where the consignment was going. The media officer said the legal process for the seized pills was under way and that the force would keep patrolling the river.

The Naf is the border river between Bangladesh and Myanmar's Rakhine State, and the Teknaf stretch is the shortest crossing for yaba pressed in the hills on the other side. Small engine boats move at night, using the dark and the many channels of the river; the Coast Guard keeps outposts along the bank, including at Shahpori, to intercept them. Most runs end with a chase, an abandoned boat and a recovery from the water rather than an arrest, because the crews know the channels and the shoreline better than any patrol.

That pattern is what happened on Wednesday night. The seizure is large in value but thin in evidence: pills without people. Investigators will now have to work out who packed the sack, who was waiting for it and whether the boat can be traced to an owner or a landing point.

Coast Guard seizures on the Naf are reported regularly, and each one removes a consignment from a trade that feeds a market stretching from Teknaf to Dhaka. The force has said it treats the river route as a priority, and its media officer repeated on Thursday that operations would continue.

What remains open is the part that matters for any prosecution: whether a case will be filed, which agency will handle it, and whether the abandoned boat yields a name. The Coast Guard has not said. ScrollBeat will update this report when those details are released.