Sears Was America's Biggest Store. Now It Has 5 Left.

This investigation is built from the records: Sears Holdings' SEC filings, the bankruptcy-court record, the federal pension agency's notices, and the lawsuit Sears' bankruptcy estate filed in April 2019. We read them. 🔔 Subscribe for a new documentary from the records every Wednesday & Saturday:    / @breachdocs   In February 2019, a federal judge approved the sale of what was left of Sears, 425 stores and about 45,000 jobs, for $5.2 billion. The buyer was a hedge fund run by the company's own chairman, Eddie Lampert, whose fund was also its largest shareholder and one of its biggest lenders. This is how America's biggest store, the catalog that sold houses by mail and built the tallest tower in the world, came to that courtroom, and what the records show about who was on every side of the table. Lampert and ESL Investments have denied the allegations in the estate's lawsuit, which settled in 2022 for $175 million with no admission of liability. CHAPTERS 0:00 Sears today 1:27 The Catalog 4:05 The Tower 6:22 The Hedge Fund Man 8:51 Warring Tribes 11:12 Selling the Furniture 14:53 White Plains 18:02 The Paper Trail KEY RECORDS AND SOURCES • Sears Holdings 8-K, Seritage transaction (July 7, 2015): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da... • Lands' End 8-K, $500M dividend and spin-off (April 4, 2014): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da... • Sears Holdings 8-K, Chapter 11 filing (October 15, 2018): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da... • PBGC, Sears Holdings pension plans: https://pbgc.gov/Sears-QA • Stanley Black & Decker 10-K FY2017 (Craftsman): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da... • NBC News, the estate's lawsuit (April 2019): https://www.nbcnews.com/business/busi... • Retail Dive, the $175M settlement (August 2022): https://www.retaildive.com/news/sears... • NBC News, the Kmart–Sears merger (November 2004): https://www.nbcnews.com/id/6509683/ • History.com, Sears catalog history: https://www.history.com/articles/sear... Full source list on request. PHOTO CREDITS (Wikimedia Commons, free licences) CC BY 2.0: Vincent Desjardins; August Schwerdfeger; Chad Davis; Chris Rycroft; dok1 / Don O'Brien; endymion120; Jacob; jasonwoodhead23; JJBers; Mike Mozart; Nicholas Eckhart; Paul Sableman; Phillip Pessar; Richard (Flickr); Robert S. Donovan; Robert Stinnett; Robert T Bell; Steve Shook; Ted Murphy; Tony Webster; Virginia Retail; Walmart Corporate CC BY 3.0: Corey Coyle CC BY 4.0: Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives; Giorgio Galeotti; Hayden Soloviev; JJBers Public; Keiteay; MeanieHyaena; Pokemonprime; Quintin Soloviev CC BY-SA 2.0: Ben Schumin; bossco; Charles & Hudson; Chris; Doug Kerr; Ethan Long; Jacob; Ken Lund; Matthew Dillon; Mike Kalasnik; Nairn McWilliams; Señor Codo; w_lemay; Willis Lam CC BY-SA 2.5: Ben Schumin; Kmf164 CC BY-SA 3.0: Ad Meskens; AgnosticPreachersKid; Canadian2006; Carlos Delgado; Daniel Case; Dough4872; Erich Robert Joli Weber; J.C. Fields; Michael Rivera; Mr.choppers; Niceckhart; Pi.1415926535; Steveboerger / Lämpel; Stu pendousmat; Voogd075 at Dutch Wikipedia CC BY-SA 4.0: Acabashi; Arild Vågen; Breawycker; CaliforniaMindset; Daniel Schwen; DanTD; Dietmar Rabich; Downtowngal; ECTran71; Famartin; Godsfriendchuck; Mike Peel; NotTheDefault; Spidy0329; Steve Morgan; Tedder; Ynsalh; Yuriy Mikhed (Juras14); 颐园居 Public domain / CC0: Library of Congress (incl. Harris & Ewing, Carol M. Highsmith, Dorothea Lange, Jack Delano, Solomon D. Butcher); U.S. National Archives (DOCUMERICA); U.S. Treasury; George Bush Presidential Library; Minnesota Historical Society; Sears, Roebuck and Co.; and Wikimedia contributors. FILM (public domain, Internet Archive / Prelinger Archives): Christmas Brings Joy To Everyone, 1945/12/10 (1945); Big Train, The (Part I) (c. 1950); Easy Does It (1940); From Dawn to Sunset (Part I) (1937); Shopping Can Be Fun: A New Concept in Merchandising (1957); [Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire, A] (1906) Catalog pages: Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalogs, 1894–1925 (public domain). Licences: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Archival photos and public-domain film are labelled on screen with their place and date; a few scene illustrations were created with AI; narration with a synthetic voice; documents and sources listed above. Allegations in civil lawsuits are claims, not findings; no one in this story was charged with a crime in connection with Sears' collapse. 🔔 Subscribe for a new documentary from the records every Wednesday & Saturday:    / @breachdocs   #Sears #Kmart #businesshistory