I hope if you're hard on Eddie that you also are on every other retail CEO of every other retailer that went bust. Fact is that every retailer eventually goes out and it's a cyclical business where tastes change fast. As far as I see Eddie took a company on the decline and out of fashion for at least 2 decades and spent a lot of time and money trying to fix it. Not sure why he gets so much hate as he's done more to save Sears and Kmart than most CEOs do.
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That guy running Germany in the 30s and 40s was just another human being too.
His (ESL) failing is that he isn't, never was and never will be a Retailer - he failed this company and it's associates by not accepting that fact. Inside of HE he pitted BU CFO against BU CFO - instead of making it a team. Outside of HE - he didn't tackle the issuing of a surging Amazon and a rising Walmart...he failed many times over the years to bring in the right talent to save the company. And he could've done that. In the end - he lined his pockets with the assets that were the Holdings of Sears Holdings. A good manager recognizes their shortcomings and limits - he never did that. The failings of this company lay squarely on his shoulders.
Eddie Lampert is a CON MAN. He's a vulture capitalist who NEVER had a plan for a retail venture. This has ALWAYS been a real estate play done for his personal gain. He never "SAVED" anything. He propped it up, and chipped away at each thing of value until finally there was nothing let.
He LIED to you for 14 years about his glorious "transformation". You believed him.
He's had a thousand opportunities to truly "transform" the company and rejected each opportunity.
Stop trying to justify this filthy pig by defending him. There is nothing to defend.
Big difference between a CEO whose salary and job depend on success and a CEO who owns most of the company, has a hand picked BOD, sold most of the good profitable real estate and brands to himself or his hedge fund, and makes himself the only person to be guranteed money when it all ends.
@upc; You can likely thank the 08 economic crash for him drawing this out as long as he did. This was the endgame from the beginning, but cashing out back then would have been far less profitable. If there had ever been any actual plans intended to revive the business rather than pick at its fresh carcass, they could have easily been implemented at any time since the early 00s.
Eddie is a business man. Buys failed businesses, disects them and sells thier parts. Like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman.
He wasn't supposed to keep us running this long. He saved us. A few times. He's not as bad as I thought.
This is about Sears, not other CEOs. Start a page for others, since your so concerned.
I think the difference here is analogous to blaming a surgeon for failing to save their patient despite their best efforts, versus a surgeon actively killing their patient (while trying to make it appear they were trying) because they stand to inherit a vast fortune from them.
Eddie (Like almost every CEO, CFO, and the like) gets to activate a golden parachute and get away scot-free from the disaster. The little people (Read 'serfs', 'peasants', 'wage slaves', call us what you will.) get absolutely nothing, except stress, financial stress and strain, and the comforting thought that we do not lose every last thing we fought/worked/slaved for to make some clown in a tower who most likely did nothing to earn their large and ill gotten gains get to dance on and have naughty fun in piles of money.
So my question: Why would anyone defend any robber baron?
@avr, because the way people talk about him as if he's some sort of Bond villain is way out of proportion to what he's done. He's still a human being and I'm not sure how going against the one person who's giving everything to save Sears and Kmart, including his reputation by the way, is helpful to saving Sears and Kmart. You'd think people would get behind the one guy who actually wants to and has an interest in saving Sears and Kmart and making it great again.
I also don't see why people like you are defending him for no real reason.