Denying $4 Billion 400 Million Acquisition Of Old Department Store Sears Can "Succeed"?

According to media reports, the old department store, Sears Sears, which had originally entered the bankruptcy liquidation process, was able to "survive" at the last minute. Its chairman Eddie Lambert (Eddie Lampert)'s hedge fund ESL Investments submitted a $4 billion 400 million takeover offer. The object of the purchase was Sears's 425 store. The application time just caught up with the deadline of 4 p.m. local time on December 28th.

According to Reuters previously reported, local time on October 15th, Sears formally filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. court, is expected to close by the end of 2018 at least 142 profitable businesses.

It is reported that Sears's goal of bankruptcy is to sell and restructure some 400 of the most profitable shops.

However, Lambert does not seem to want Sears to come to an end.

In December 6th, Lambert's ESL Investments fund submitted a bid offer worth up to $4 billion 600 million. Although the proposal met the deadline, it did not mean that Sears could avoid bankruptcy.

Sears's advisers must decide whether hedge fund ESL Investments is a qualified bidder by January 4th; if so, ESL Investments will be able to take part in the January 14th auction.

It is worth noting that if the formal application of this ESL Investments is consistent with the previous acquisition plan, the plan will probably not be supported by Sears's unsecured creditors.

This also means that Sears may eventually escape the fate of bankruptcy.

Public information shows that Sears was founded in 1888 and was the largest retailer in the United States. Its stock price had reached more than 130 US dollars per share in 2007, but its share price fell below 1 US dollars in September 2018.

In addition, data show that since 2011, Sears has accumulated a deficit of more than 11 billion dollars.

Sears's most brilliant moment, annual revenue accounted for 1% of the gross domestic product of the United States, and at the top of the world's largest department store retailer, why is it still difficult to escape from the fate of prosperity?

Some analysts say that Sears's going to the end has a lot to do with Lambert's erroneous decision making.

In 2005, under the operation of Eddie Lambert, Sears merged with the troubled retailer Kmart.

However, Lambert was not interested in the retail industry itself, and did not actively adjust the retail business itself. Instead, he invested most of his money in expanding insurance, financial services and real estate business, which made Sears distracted from the core business - retail business, and was taken away from the throne of the largest American retailer in 1991 by WAL-MART.

Later, the rise of the electricity supplier began to divide up the share of the retail market.

Although Lambert is aware of the importance of e-commerce, it will save money from a large number of physical stores, and the money that is acquired by selling assets for the online retail business, but because of the backwardness of the related technologies, Sears is the merciless "rolling stock" of Amazon, and its share in the online retail sector is still less than Amazon's zero.

In addition to breaking away from the core business and losing the electricity supplier, Sears's "sticking to tradition" is also an important factor for its demise.

Spot investment October reported that Sears's products could not keep up with the times, and there were a lot of outdated products in the inventory, so they were unwilling to do a lot of liquidation in order to make profits. After the merger of Sears and Kmart, the progress of data and system integration was slow, and eventually it was farther and farther away from young consumers.

Sears is not trying to "fight back" in the face of the attack of WAL-MART and Amazon. However, its slow pformation in retail business and backward digital technology have made him lose the opportunity to turn the tables and be surpassed by the later.

Source: win business network: Chen Qiqi