FORMERLY PE OWNED
Shopko
Includes ShopKo, Shopko Stores
department store · Green Bay, WI
- PE Firm
- Sun Capital Partners →
- Year Acquired
- 2005
PE bought it, sold the buildings for $815 million, charged consulting fees for over a decade, then liquidated every store and 14,000 jobs.
What Happened
- Sun Capital bought Shopko in 2005 for $1.1 billion and immediately loaded the company with $1 billion in debt
- Sun Capital paid itself dividend after dividend, including a $50 million payout in 2015, plus $1 million per quarter in 'consulting fees' for over a decade
- Filed for bankruptcy January 2019; failed to find a buyer; all 360 stores in 26 states liquidated by June 2019
- Filed for bankruptcy in January 2019 and couldn't find a buyer. All 360 stores in 26 states were liquidated by June 2019
The Damage Done
- 14,000 workers lost their jobs in the liquidation, many in small towns where Shopko was the only department store around
- Some rural towns lost their only pharmacy when Shopko folded — Bridger Valley, Wyoming, home to about 6,000 people, was left with none
- Workers say they were promised severance to stay through the liquidation, then got stiffed. Nearly 4,000 of them eventually won a $3 million settlement in bankruptcy court
Sources
- Sun Capital: A Case Study in Private Equity Looting — Americans for Financial Reform(2020-10-01)
- How workers suffered from Shopko's bankruptcy while Sun Capital made money — Axios(2019-06-11)
- Another Retail Chain Bought & Stripped Bare by Sun Capital Goes Bankrupt — Wolf Street(2019-01-17)
- One Year After Shopko Went Bankrupt — Urban Milwaukee / Wisconsin Examiner(2020-03-22)
- Shopko Bankruptcy Means Some Rural Towns Lose Their Only Pharmacy — KUER / Mountain West News Bureau(2019-04-19)
- Court approves severance pay settlement for former Shopko employees — WBAY Green Bay(2020-10-16)
- Shopko's closure to leave retail gap in small-town Minnesota — MPR News(2019-03-24)
- Shopko's closing leaves some communities without a department store — WQOW Eau Claire(2019-03-20)