Eddie Lampert is clueless.
He made KMart briefly profitable by selling off high priced real estate that KMart owned. After the high priced real estate ran out, he drove them into the dirt.
I knew the wonderboy wasn’t such a wonderboy from day one. It was all about manipulation of the financials.
Indeed. In years past, I've seen these outfits seek out companies that had a fully funded pension plan and suck every dollar out of it that they could. Business Week lauded one guy as "CEO of the Year". His biggest accomplishment? Dumping the company's retirement plan on the government Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
That, and selling off real estate holdings seem to be the main tactic. Then those CEOs bail with their Golden Parachute while the employees get the pink slip. Many times they join the Executive Ballet and become board members of some other company and then vote those parachutes for the next CEO in a one-hand-washes-the-other routine.
He’s a trader... wall street hedge fund guy.. he knows nothing about retail and refused to listen to, and drove away anyone who did.