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So what color are the blue light specials going to be? Is KMart coming back to SA ever?
http://money.cnn.com/2004/11/17/news...ex.htm?cnn=yes
Kmart buying Sears
Consumers could be getting mall-based alternative to discounters in $11 billion merger deal.
November 17, 2004: 11:25 AM EST
By Parija Bhatnagar, CNN/Money staff writer
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Kmart is buying Sears, Roebuck & Co. for $11 billion in a deal that will marry two of the nation's oldest but troubled retailers into the No. 3 retail chain.
The deal, announced by the retail chains Wednesday morning, is meant to merge the best of both companies' brands.
Kmart's strength is clothing and home accessories, with such brands as Thalia Sodi, Jaclyn Smith, Joe Boxer and Martha Stewart Everyday products.
Sears' has long been known for its Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances, and while it's struggled in clothing and other 'soft' lines, it bought Lands' End, and the youth-oriented Apostrophe brand, to try to fill those holes.
For consumers, the deal means being able to get appliances and other hard goods at Kmart and more clothing at Sears.
Sears' biggest strength is in home appliances, where it's still No. 1, despite a declining market share, according to Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst with market research firm NPD Group.
The new company will continue to operate with both Sears and Kmart stores but "several hundred" Kmarts will be converted to Sears, Sears Chairman Alan Lacy said.
The companies currently operate about 3,500 stores combined.
"We'll have work to do ahead converting Kmart stores into Sears where appropriate and (to) bring some of Sears' products into Kmart. The idea is to make the stores more compe ive while staying focused on the customer," Kmart chairman Edward Lampert said at a news conference .
"Kmart never had appliances and had no reputation for service," said Kurt Barnard, an independent retail analyst. "That's an honor that belongs to Sears. And Kmart has a reputation for low prices, which Sears never has had."
"Imagine going into Kmart and buying a Sears Craftsman tool set, or buying Kmart's Martha Stewart home products at Sears," said Cohen. "To Kmart shoppers, Lands' End may not mean anything, but now it will."
But Barnard and others said that even the combined company will face a challenge in competing with the more successful names in retailing, and that store closings were also likely.
The merger should help the new company compete against Wal-Mart Stores (Research), the world's largest retailer and an aggressive discounter, as well as Home Depot (Research), the home improvement chain that ranks as the country's No. 2 retailer overall, and Target (Research), which will lose its place as No. 3 to the combined Sears-Kmart.
Investors applauded the deal. Sears (up $10.00 to $55.20, Research) stock soared 22 percent while Kmart jumped about 17 percent in late morning trading.
The new company will be known as Sears Holdings and be based at Sears headquarters outside Chicago. But both names will continue to be used on stores.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- With CNN/Money senior writer Chris Isidore
So what color are the blue light specials going to be? Is KMart coming back to SA ever?
I didn't know there was a Blue Light Special in the Retail Store department...
I know Denver overpaid him, but this is still a suprising business venture for a professional basketball player...
@ Spurminator
I think you are in the wrong Forum, Spurm
Wow, they've decided to go under together.
I think they should change the name to SearsMart.
Sears also owns Land's End.
i had heard on the radio recently that kmart had a new ceo or something and to expect their stock to rise....one of those money minute spots on 760....
Shop smart, shop S-Mart!
(And damn you Spurm for that post. I just came back here with what I thought would be an original idea.)(Damn!)
LOLShop smart, shop S-Mart!
That was funnier anyway...
"Come see the softer side of K-Martin!"
half credit, Sears just declared bankruptcy.
interesting that the CEO Lampert also runs the hedge fund that sucked them dry and will sell off their brands.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sears...031836248.htmlLampert is also the largest shareholder in Seritage Growth Properties, a real estate investment trust that counts Sears as its biggest tenant.
ESL said in April it would be open to buying some of the company’s assets and urged the department store to put the businesses on the block. In said in a statement Monday it had proposed as recently as September a strategic plan that would include selling assets, including those ESL was seeking to purchase.
“While a comprehensive out-of-court resolution was ESL’s preferred approach, it did not prove possible to achieve this outside the framework of a Chapter 11 process,” ESL said.
At some point in 1979 sears stopped keeping up with the times
where the am I going to be able to buy my Toughskins???
$25 million doesn't seem like much these days for corporate parachute money spread out among all the executives
surprise, surprise, Lampert's hedge fund submits a bid for Sears.
hard to believe they'd let the man who ran Sears Roebuck into the ground buy it at a discount, but there you are.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/28/sear...r-company.html
Sears is just a debt dumpster at this point.
Used to be a pretty good company. It was shocking to me how dumpy and hollowed out Sears looked toward the end.
It seems quaint now, but mail order commerce was a game changer in the USA.
https://www.thenation.com/article/se...etail-workers/Lampert bought Kmart in 2003 and merged the two companies in 2005. He came into ownership of both with basically no experience in retail; his background was in risk arbitrage at Goldman Sachs. To buy Sears and Kmart, Lampert, through his hedge fund, used the private-equity model of a leveraged buyout: He financed the purchase of those companies by saddling them with debt and using little of his own capital. Once he became a retail CEO, he stuck with the Wall Street playbook. He sold off Sears’s most valuable assets, such as the Lands’ End clothing and Craftsman tool brands. Many business lines ended up in separate companies that he has invested in through his hedge fund and profited from as Sears withered. Lands’ End, for instance, is now worth more than Sears. He also sold off a cluster of Sears storesfor $2.7 billion to Seritage, a real-estate company that he headed as chairman. Sears then had to pay rent at many of those locations.
Meanwhile, Lampert’s hedge fund loaded the company up with debt through loans it issued itself, making money off commissions and interest. ESL and its affiliates lent Sears some $2.6 billion—about half the total debt it had as of September—earning $400 million in interest and fees. All those losses, all that debt, and all the rent it was paying on its stores left the company little to invest to keep up with Walmart and Amazon.
Anyone liking the idea of buying JC Penny's stock at $1.30 per share?
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