J.C. Penney Lenders Consider Teaming Up With Outside Bidders
- Their efforts to engineer a conventional sale have stalled
- Saving 70,000 jobs becomes driving force in bankruptcy process
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The lenders steering J.C. Penney Co.’s bankruptcy are considering joining forces with an outside bidder to buy the retailer after efforts to line up an independent owner stalled.
The plan envisions the hedge funds that hold J.C. Penney’s loans would become co-owners of a business they never planned to run, in partnership with a third party that could include one of the potential buyers they’ve been wooing, according to people with knowledge of the developments. They asked not to be named discussing the private and still-tentative plan.