I agree. The whole town hall was BS. Eddie & his misfit C-Suite congratulating themselves for pulling the company out of the very bankruptcy they engineered was laughable. Their joint statement about being better positioned for success without the increased debt burden was a joke too.
Nothing new here, but the debt burden they're talking about was created intentionally by Eddie's own financial engineering. From the moment Eddie started cannibalizing the business through brand sales, privatizing business units (while still retaining operating control through ESL) and creating asset shelters like Seritage to siphon off money from real estate holdings, he deliberately drove up his own debt. The very same debt he used as collateral with credit bids to buy back the company his hedge fund already owned and he chaired and operated as CEO. Then he was able to manipulate the courts and shed pension liability and unsecured debtors and vendors for a final death blow to employees and the brand itself.
The whole scheme is actually brilliant but in the end the employees and brand will have lost the most. Eddie will be just fine since he owns stakes in all sides of the business - just as he always has. Only now he can continue the manipulations and engineering in private. Eddie's "turnaround of Sears" will be about as popular as the Fyre Festival when his true intentions start to materialize and the assets are further stripped away until the last store closes. Maybe he'll hire Ja Rule as CEO? At least it would be entertaining.