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Sears considers selling signature brands in other venues
The employees on the retail worker forums have been predicting this ever since the stock took its first nose dive. None of this should be a surprise to anyone who has had any reason to pay attention to what's going on. Why did anyone think he formed a special little front company to handle the brand names and another one to handle the real estate and yet others for anything else he considers a liquifiable asset? (Feb 29, 2008 | post #5)
Sears revises offer for Restoration Hardware to $4.55 per...
Just add another failing retailer to the mix is going to fix everything, eh? If people aren't buying overpriced junk from Restoration, why would they suddenly reverse a decade old exodus from Sears to buy the same junk there? (Feb 29, 2008 | post #1)
Sears Holdings profit falls 48%
What this man has done to a century old retail icon (Sears Roebuck) is pathetic and should be criminal. If Sears had to be taken over, I'm guessing that if it had been taken over by a retailer instead of a hedge fund, the new owners would have at least been able to salvage the good name of the company itself and it's likewise iconic brands. Mr. Lampert on the other hand, has done nothing but lock those names in a bunch of little LLCs and proceed to totally gut the company of anything of value. Maybe a little more effort toward "turning the business around" and a little less on squandering the company's cash on stock buybacks early on might have made a difference but now there's little left to consider but how to accomplish the brakup while putting the largest number of neckels in Mr. Lampert's pocket. Sad. (Feb 28, 2008 | post #3)
Lampert likens himself to Manning in letter to shareholders
Well gee! Every time I think he's run out of ways to serve up the same old limp lettuce, he surprises me. This time though I had to wait a bit to have my little say because I was laughing so hard at those first few paragraphs I couldn't read the rest of the thing. Once I did though, it was obviously nothing more than a rehash of the same old talking points of the last two or three of these things along with a strong hint we can probably expect more of the same in the next quarter. I don't believe I've ever seen a better example of a man who's starved his cow to death but keeps right on trying to milk it than Mr. Lampert's company today. (Feb 28, 2008 | post #1)
Sears' Craftsman, Kenmore executives depart
Borrowed this directly from a poster on a forum I belong to because I couldn't think of a way to say it any better. Absolutely pathetic. That’s the best that can be said about these folks? After all their service? By not saying more, it appears he says a lot. Guess the muzzle is firmly in place. (Feb 22, 2008 | post #1)
Your story is a lot more typical than you might think too. A Boston TV station did a feature on the horrible stories they were hearing about Sears' service and internet retail sites have dozens of similar stories on a daily basis. Eventually, even the most hard headed Chairman Of The Board in history has to realize that he can no longer plam them off as "isolated cases" and his cost cutting rampage over the past three years has something to do with why Sears has, in just a few short years, pretty much lost the reputation for quality and service that it had taken the previous 110 years to build. But hey, as long as those margins were up there, who gave a rat's patoot about customer complaints, eh? It's what do do about it now that margins are tanking along with everything else that has to be driving him nuts. (Feb 13, 2008 | post #6)
An excellent article, as we've come to expect from Ms. Jones. The Chicago media seem to be the only outlets where you can get the plain unvarnished scoop on what's happening at the remnants of what was once an American icon. (Feb 13, 2008 | post #2)
Sears' turnaround plan short on details, long on odds
What Eddie needs to do is build a dome over the entire Chicago metropolitan area. That way the wind off the lake would stop blowing all the smoke away and exposing the mirrors. (Feb 2, 2008 | post #24)
Sears will still pay ousted CEO $1 million salary
Sears stock has undergone some of the most intricate (and in my opinion, questionable) manipulations imaginable during the past five to six years. See how much KMart's real estate assets were worth as the company was being "brialliantly " guided out of bankruptcy. Compare that with what those same assets were supposedly worth after a few premium stores were sold to HD but between 50 and 60 locations, consisting almost exclusively of leased properties and involving some of KMart's less desirable locations, were sold to none other than Sears itself in the Spring of 2004. This was for an extremely inflated price which itself ought be subject for a major investigation, just a matter of months before the "merger" was announced. See how much the value of KMart real estate suddenly gained on THAT announcement. It would appear that Sears own money was used to inflate the worth of KMart to "suitor" status, at least. Then do a little checking and see who the largest shareholder in Sears was at the time and who had already built a reputation based on "shareholder activism" over the years. There are a ton of factors that go into an actual answer to questions involving SHC's stock price manipulations but getting KMart revalued to the point that it could swallow up a company that was, in many estimations, worth more than it was, was probably the most visible beginning. (Feb 1, 2008 | post #7)
Sears chief Aylwin Lewis to step down
My condolences to Theft Victim, especially since I've been there only for me it was a Bank of America VISA account. I know it's no consolation but unfortunately, this is not at all uncommon and with Citi in the trouble it's in and with virtually no oversight anymore, will probably even get worse. Just a couple of questions to consider though in regard to Citi and Sears. Isn't Lampert a big time shareholder of Citigroup also? Isn't it one of the holdings that he's been taking a major drubbing in in recent months? And for this one, you have to go back some to before the "merger" announcement when Mr. Lampert was still having to exercise his control of the company through a proxy. How big a role did Mr. Lampert's shareholder activism play in the decision by Alan Lacy and the then current BOD decision to sell the Sears credit division to Citi just a matter of a few months after Mr. Lacy had been staunchly defending Sears continuing to operate it's own credit division, calling it the only division that was bringing in any money at the time. One thing about Sears that you can take to the bank (I'd recommend somewhere other then CitiBank though) is that there are always going to be a bunch more questions than there are answers. (Jan 30, 2008 | post #8)
Billionaire Edward Lampert relinquishing day-to-day contr...
If you believe Eddie Lampert is going to "cede control" of a business in which a large portion of his personal wealth is invested, how about taking a look at this little beachfront property I've got for sale in Oklahoma? How can he create a new legacy as a brilliant businessman by letting someone else run the business with orthodox policies that are pretty much the opposite of his own? (Jan 30, 2008 | post #3)
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