Sears Has Complicated Problems
Also hedge-fund performance, gold stablecoins, the BEC and art.
Sears.
What if Eddie Lampert hadn’t done all the stuff? Like, he bought some Kmart unsecured debt in 2002, became its biggest shareholder out of bankruptcy, and merged it with Sears to form Sears Holdings Corp. in 2004. Then he embarked on years of financial engineering, spinoffs, loans, restructurings and what have you to extract value and try to keep Sears afloat, ultimately becoming its chief executive officer and (through his hedge fund ESL Investments Inc.) its largest shareholder and most interesting creditor. There are signs that that might be coming to an end. “After 13 years under Lampert’s stewardship, Sears finally seems to be hurtling toward bankruptcy, if not outright liquidation,” reports Bloomberg. “Some of Sears Holdings Corp.’s biggest lenders were pushing for it to liquidate rather than use bankruptcy protection to try to save an American legend,” reports the Wall Street Journal.