What Happened to Sears After It Rented Back Its Own Stores?

The usual answer to what happened to Sears is that it gave up its famous catalog, lost out to Amazon and sold itself off piece by piece. Sears's own filings, and Seritage's, tell another part of it: the lease Sears signed to rent its stores back. On July 7 2015, Sears sold 235 of its stores, and its half-share in 31 more, to a new company called Seritage for about $2.7 billion, and leased 255 properties back. This video follows that sale and the people who made it: chairman and chief executive Eddie Lampert, whose firm ESL owned about half of Sears and put $745 million into Seritage; the board and the three independent directors who approved the sale; and Duff & Phelps, which called the price and the rent fair. On the day the sale closed, Lampert said: "We expect to continue to operate most of our retail stores in each of the locations owned by Seritage." By the end of 2018, the year Sears filed for bankruptcy, Sears was in 96 of the 255. It also covers what usually gets left out: Lampert's letter on the plan; what the lease let each side do; who ended the leases; the lease ESL's new company signed with Seritage after the bankruptcy, with Lampert as chairman of both sides; and the lawsuit that followed, which settled in 2022 for $175 million, most of it paid by insurance, with no one admitting wrongdoing. Gone Public's Kmart story ends where this one begins:    • Kmart: Why It Hid a $570 Million Debt Befo...   Gone Public tells the stories of recognizable brands through the specific decisions and the specific people that shaped their fate. The next story is already in production. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one. Thumbnail photo: "Sears - Martinsburg Mall" by Mike Kalasnik on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0. The thumbnail is shared under the same license. Contact: gonepubliccontact@gmail.com © Gone Public 2026 #Sears #WhatHappenedToSears #BusinessDocumentary