2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumAyn Rand-loving CEO destroys his empire - Sears
The invisible hand waves bye-bye to Eddie Lampert, whose business plan has run Sears into the ground
Once upon a time, hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert was living a Wall Street fairy tale. His fairy godmother was Ayn Rand, the dashing diva of free-market ideology whose quirky economic notions would transform him into a glamorous business hero.
For a while, it seemed to work like a charm. Pundits called him the Steve Jobs of the investment world. The new Warren Buffett. By 2006 he was flying high, the richest man in Connecticut, managing over $15 billion thorough his hedge fund, ESL Investments.
Stoked by his Wall Street success, Lampert plunged headlong into the retail world. Undaunted by his lack of industry experience and hailed a genius, Lampert boldly pushed to merge Kmart and Sears with a layoff and cost-cutting strategy that would, he promised, send profits into the stratosphere. Meanwhile the hotshot threw cash around like an oil sheikh, buying a $40 million pad in Floridas Biscayne Bay, a record even for that star-studded county.
Fast-forward to 2013: The fairy tale has become a nightmare.
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroys_his_empire_partner/
The GOP and Ayn Rand Lovers are great at Distroying Things!
flying rabbit
(4,632 posts)Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)Lucky for the world, this honcho has screwed the pooch and will probably not be trusted in the financial community again. Such a shame for poor Eddie.
Response to mitty14u2 (Original post)
russspeakeasy This message was self-deleted by its author.
Warpy
(111,245 posts)is why the board of directors haven't cut this clown loose.
The experiment is obviously a failure, well, obvious to everybody but Crazy Eddie.
I'm not one of their stockholders and if I'd inherited any of it, I'd have cut it loose years ago. Badly managed companies are money losers.