{"id":6105,"date":"2019-01-08T15:28:39","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T15:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/us-retail-giant-sears-seeks-liquidation-reports-say\/"},"modified":"2019-01-08T15:28:39","modified_gmt":"2019-01-08T15:28:39","slug":"us-retail-giant-sears-seeks-liquidation-reports-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/us-retail-giant-sears-seeks-liquidation-reports-say\/","title":{"rendered":"US retail giant Sears seeks liquidation, reports say"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sears, the US department store chain that once dominated US shopping malls, is reported to be seeking liquidation.<\/p>\n

After failing to reach a deal with chairman Edward Lampert over a $4.4bn (\u00a33.5bn) takeover, the retailer is now poised to ask a court for permission to liquidate.<\/p>\n

Sears Holdings – which also owns Kmart – first filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October.<\/p>\n

The 126-year-old firm had 68,000 employees when it filed for bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

Should liquidation go ahead, many of those could now lose their jobs.<\/p>\n

However, some parts of the business could be salvaged from any liquidation, such as its home services unit, retail analysts say.<\/p>\n

The company has suffered, along with many other traditional retailers, from rising online competition from firms such as Amazon.<\/p>\n

The company has not yet officially commented on the liquidation reports.<\/p>\n

However, Sears’s social media team said in a tweet on Monday: “We may be slowing down, but we are not out of the race just yet. Don’t count us completely out. Happy Shopping!”<\/p>\n

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Media caption<\/span>Sears struggles for shopping relevancy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When it announced its bankruptcy filing last autumn, Sears also said it would close 142 unprofitable stores, on top of the previously announced closure of 46 stores.<\/p>\n

Chapter 11 protection postpones a US company’s obligations to its creditors, giving it time to reorganise its debts or sell parts of the business.<\/p>\n

Mr Lampert is the company’s chief executive, biggest investor and landlord. His 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

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Image copyright<\/span>
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Sears was founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in 1886 as a mail order catalogue company. It opened its first retail locations in 1925 and eventually became a fixture in shopping malls across the US.<\/p>\n

It was America’s largest retailer by revenue until 1989, when Walmart overtook it<\/a>,<\/p>\n

Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, said: “Reports of Sears headed to liquidation suggest that the much-storied retailer is now at the end of its long road to collapse. <\/p>\n

“Its recent journey to this point has been characterised by incredibly poor strategic decisions, chronic underinvestment and continuous financial machinations designed to keep the company afloat. <\/p>\n

“All of this impacted trading, which has remained dire, making Sears more like a patient in a coma than a fully functioning retailer.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source<\/a> by [author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image copyright Getty Images Sears, the US department store chain that once dominated US shopping malls, is reported to be seeking liquidation. After failing to reach a deal with chairman Edward Lampert over a $4.4bn (\u00a33.5bn) takeover, the retailer is now poised to ask a court for permission to liquidate. Sears Holdings – which also … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6105","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\/6105","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=6105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}