Time Running Out on Blackstone-Backed Bid for Sears Canada

  • Liquidation looms with court deadline approaching Oct. 13
  • Company bleeding customers and cash amid online onslaught

A Sears Canada store inside a mall in Toronto, Ontario, on June 22, 2017.

Photographer: Cole Burston/Bloomberg
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Time is running out for Sears Canada Inc.’s executive chairman to pull off a bid for the company’s assets and avert a liquidation that would eliminate as many as 13,000 jobs.

A management group led by Brandon Stranzl and backed by Blackstone Group LP, has until Oct. 13 to convince a special committee of Sears Canada’s board of directors to accept his revised bid for the chain. That day the Toronto-based company faces a court hearing to liquidate its remaining stores, a move its creditors have been urging as the best way to settle its debts, including C$450 million ($359 million) of debtor-in-possession financing from a group led by Wells Fargo & Co.