Polaroid Tells of Other Suitors, Need for More Staff Cuts

Polaroid Corp. said Friday that it has received expressions of interest from several corporate suitors other than Shamrock Holdings and Forstmann Little & Co., but the company declined to name the potential bidders.

Girding for a takeover battle, Polaroid said this week that it would offer early retirement to hundreds more employees, including a quarter of its top executives. The Cambridge-based instant photography firm also warned employees that layoffs may occur if the voluntary incentives don’t work.

Wall Street analysts said they doubted that the cost cutting would dissuade potential buyers.

“I think the news that they’re going to cut another bulk of their employees out is positive for the company. But will it stop a takeover? Absolutely not,” said Alex Henderson of Prudential-Bache Securities.

Polaroid’s directors voted unanimously Tuesday to reject a hostile offer, which consisted of $2.3 billion in cash and 40% of what the company recovers from a possible court settlement, from Shamrock Holdings, a Burbank investment company owned by the family of Roy E. Disney. The company also has rejected a friendly offer from Forstmann Little, a New York investment firm.

The warning of potential layoffs came from I. MacAllister Booth, Polaroid’s president and chief executive, in a question-and-answer session with high-ranking executives on Wednesday.

Portions of the session were replayed on videotape Thursday before employees at a meeting the company says was intended to be closed to the public but was attended by a Boston Globe reporter.

“This company is like a family to me,” Booth said on the videotape. “When my family gets attacked I fight . . . and when my company gets attacked, I fight, too.”

As an incentive to retire, employees who leave now will be paid through Nov. 30. “If that doesn’t work,” Booth said, “we will have to rely on layoffs.”