[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/GettyImages-2282863163.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tGetty Images, a massive image licensing company with hundreds of millions of assets in its library, is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>, the company plans to undergo a restructuring process and emerge as a private company, with support from billionaire Charles Koch\u2019s investment firm, by the end of the year. (ARTnews<\/em> and THR<\/em> are both owned by Penske Media Corporation, which has had an exclusive global media partnership with Getty Images since the fall of 2022.)<\/p>\n \n\tThe bankruptcy announcement on Monday follows a failed $3.7 billion merger between Getty Images and Shutterstock, a rival photo and video licensing marketplace, announced in January 2025. The goal at the time was to \u201ccombine in a merger of equals transaction, creating a premier visual content company.\u201d The new company would be called Getty Images Holdings, Inc.; Getty Images\u2019s chief executive Craig Peters would stay on as CEO of the new entity.<\/p>\n \n\tInstead, a year and half later, the deal was off, due to a regulatory roadblock in the UK that would force Getty Images Holdings, Inc., to sell off the editorial side of Shutterstock, which the board of Getty Images viewed as a nonstarter. At its earnings call in August, THR<\/em> reported, Peters said that Getty Images had spent more than $100 million on the failed Shutterstock merger.<\/p>\n \n\tIn the coming months, Getty Images plans to transition from a publicly traded company to a private one, with the help of some $500 million from Koch Equity Development, which has backed Getty since 2018. A Getty Images spokesperson told THR<\/em> that the bankruptcy process would not involve layoffs, nor would the company\u2019s operations, content partners, or vendors be impacted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/getty-images-fbankruptcy-failed-merger-shutterstock-1234802261\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/GettyImages-2282863163.jpg?w=1024″] Getty Images, a massive image licensing company with hundreds of millions of assets in its library, is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the company plans to undergo a restructuring process and emerge as a private company, with support from billionaire Charles Koch\u2019s investment firm, by the end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2199937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2199937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2199937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2199937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2199937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}