[jbs789]

I think it would have been hard to recover but yeah when Lampert got involved it was all about the financial engineering rather than the operations. I bought the shares around then but sold soon after, turned off by the conflicts and the lack of focus on ops.

(I vaguely recall some realisation that he had made money but the public equity did not… It was a bit of an awakening for the young investor who had bought into fiduciary duty, shareholder interests, etc.)

[eesmith]

Also, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-this-is-what-hap...

> In 2008, Sears CEO Eddie Lampert decided to restructure the company according to [Ayn] Rand's principles.

> Lampert broke the company into more than 30 individual units, each with its own management and each measured separately for profit and loss. The idea was to promote competition among the units, which Lampert assumed would lead to higher profits. Instead, " ... the divisions turned against each other — and Sears and Kmart, the overarching brands, suffered."

See also the 2013 Salon article "Ayn Rand-loving CEO destroys his empire" at https://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroy...

[mjhay]

By Ayn Rand standards, Lampert did an excellent job with Sears. He personally made over a billion in profit from his original investment.

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2bsxn8l0u5yr6z...