a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
kleinbl00  ·  1992 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Sears is dead.

So Sears isn't technically dead; to quote Miracle Max, it's only mostly dead. The reorganization Lampert is pursuing would allow 2/3rds of its stores to stay open through the holidays at which point fuck yeah it'll be dead.

Complicating matters is the fact that Lampert sold the good Sears stores to Seritage Holdings, a REIT he happens to own, which leases the space back to Sears. Which Sears' creditors can say is a serious conflict of interest because Sears has totally been paying rent which means Lampert is paying Lampert ahead of paying anyone else... and he's apparently a slumlord. Where things get really interesting is that Seritage is a publicly traded REIT which means all of a sudden the SEC cares doubly.

I mean yeah. Sears is going to die. It's been losing something like a billion dollars a year for seven years - it lost like $2b in 2017 despite selling Craftsman for $900m. But there's gonna be some heinously ugly death throes for at least three more months.

Starting with laying off like 30,000 people tomorrow.