CORPORATE ACQUIRED
Sears
Includes Sears Roebuck, Sears Holdings
department store · Hoffman Estates, IL
- Acquirer
- ESL Investments (Lampert)
- Acquirer
- Transformco (ESL Investments)
- Year Acquired
- 2005
Eddie Lampert performed a 13-year autopsy on a living patient and sold the organs.
The Bigger Fish
- Store count collapsed from ~3,500 locations (2005) to ~425 at bankruptcy (2018) to just 5 remaining stores today
- Lampert spun off 235 most profitable stores into Seritage Growth Properties for $2.7B — a REIT he chaired and owned 43.5% of until stepping down in 2022 as it moved to liquidate
- Sears sued Lampert for stripping 'billions of dollars of assets'; settled in 2022 for $175M — a fraction of what was extracted
- ESL held $2.66B in Sears debt at bankruptcy, collecting $200M-$225M annually in interest while stores deteriorated
Since the Acquisition
- Store count collapsed from ~3,500 locations to just 5 remaining stores today
- Appliance repair and warranty service — once the gold standard — became unreliable as technicians were laid off and parts became unavailable
- Craftsman tools, Kenmore appliances, and DieHard batteries — iconic brands built over decades — were sold off to competitors
- Closed stores left strip malls and shopping centers across America with massive vacant anchor spaces