{"id":3102,"date":"2018-10-10T16:37:22","date_gmt":"2018-10-10T16:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/sears-shares-falter-on-bankruptcy-fears\/"},"modified":"2018-10-10T16:37:22","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T16:37:22","slug":"sears-shares-falter-on-bankruptcy-fears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/sears-shares-falter-on-bankruptcy-fears\/","title":{"rendered":"Sears shares falter on bankruptcy fears"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div property=\"articleBody\">\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width lead\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" alt=\"Metal gates block one of the entrances to a Sears store that is closing on September 5, 2017 in Provo, Utah.\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/181FA\/production\/_103801889_sears2.jpg\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\"\/><span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Image caption<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"media-caption__text\"><br \/>\n                    Sears has closed hundreds of stores in recent years<br \/>\n                <\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Shares in Sears Holdings plunged by more than 30% on Wednesday following a report that the US retail chain was preparing to file for bankruptcy.<\/p>\n<p>The firm was preparing the filing ahead of the deadline on Monday for a $134m (\u00a3101m) debt payment, the Wall Street Journal reported.<\/p>\n<p>Sears, which also owns Kmart, did not comment on the report. <\/p>\n<p>The firm, which has been losing money for years, is still looking at alternatives, the newspaper said.<\/p>\n<p>The company, which was once America&#8217;s biggest retailer, has been rapidly closing stores and selling properties and other assets as it tries to staunch the losses.<\/p>\n<p>But it has struggled to compete against giants such as Amazon and Walmart and is grappling with a debt load of more than $5bn.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/business-38577077\" class=\"story-body__link\">Is US retail giant Sears heading for bankruptcy?<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-us-canada-42418902\" class=\"story-body__link\">Who will the &#8216;retail apocalypse&#8217; claim in 2018?<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In recent weeks, businessman Eddie Lampert &#8211; who serves as the company&#8217;s chief executive, biggest investor, landlord and significant creditor &#8211; published a proposal to restructure the firm&#8217;s debt that would avoid bankruptcy.<\/p>\n<p>Critics have said the latest plan would give preference to debt owed to his own companies, which hold about $1.8bn in Sears&#8217; debt.<\/p>\n<p>In the past, his funds have extended credit in the face of debt deadlines, allowing Sears to avoid bankruptcy. <\/p>\n<p>Now, in addition to Monday&#8217;s deadline, the firm is facing more than $600m in debt that is due to mature over the next year.<\/p>\n<p>The firm on Tuesday announced it had appointed Alan Carr, the chief executive of Drivetrain Advisors, to its board of directors.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Carr has experience with financially distressed companies and restructuring, according to his biography.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-with-caption\">\n<div class=\"player-with-placeholder\">\n            <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-placeholder player-with-placeholder__image narrative-video-placeholder\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/images\/ic\/720x405\/p0632x7y.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Media playback is unsupported on your device<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><figcaption class=\"media-with-caption__caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Media caption<\/span>From boom to (nearly) bust: Sears struggles for shopping relevancy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Sears got its start as a mail order catalogue in 1886 and expanded rapidly, becoming a fixture in shopping malls across the country.<\/p>\n<p>But its fortunes took a turn for the worse in the 1990s amid competition from low-cost chains such as Walmart.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Lampert&#8217;s hedge fund ESL Investments took a stake in Sears in 2004, later combining it with Kmart with the aim of restoring its profitability.<\/p>\n<p>He and his affiliates now own about 49% of Sears. <\/p>\n<p>Despite the investment, Sears never regained its footing. <\/p>\n<p>The firm wracked up more than $6bn in losses between 2013 and 2017. Annual revenue more than halved in that period to about $16.7bn last year as it shuttered stores.<\/p>\n<p>As of August, the retailer had more than 860 locations in the US, compared with more than 1,700 at the end of 2014.<\/p>\n<p>Sears Canada, which was spun-off from the main company in 2012, filed for bankruptcy last year, with the loss of thousands of jobs.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape no-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                 <span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Critics have said the company&#8217;s problems were exacerbated by low investment in the firm&#8217;s stores, which left Sears especially vulnerable to trends driving shoppers out of stores towards online.<\/p>\n<p>They have also criticised the company&#8217;s decision to spend money on buying its own shares &#8211; a move that typically rewards investors by boosting the share price.<\/p>\n<p>In 2007, the price of Sears shares exceeded $100 each. But they plunged during the 2008 financial crisis and have sunk lower since.<\/p>\n<p>The shares were trading at less than 40 cents each on Wednesday &#8211; down more than 30%. They have declined from more than $30 at the start of 2015.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-45815179\">Source<\/a> by <a href=\"\">[author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Sears has closed hundreds of stores in recent years Shares in Sears Holdings plunged by more than 30% on Wednesday following a report that the US retail chain was preparing to file for bankruptcy. The firm was preparing the filing ahead of the deadline on Monday for a $134m &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}