"Many new store closings announced today"
that's why lampert's bid, as described in post 5036, reflects an offer to purchase 425 stores as opposed the the 505 stores in his original $4.6 billion stalking horse bid (which was not a qualified bid).
of those 80 announced closings, it appears that 16 were wholly owned stores and the others were leased locations.
haven't seen details of the bid yet, but the prior one included the warehouses, corporate hq, auto centers and some other things.
the bk court has already approved the sale of "ship" (sears home improvement) to "service co" the only bidder on those assets.
as to the other credit bidders objecting to a portion of lampert's bid being a "credit bid", that may fall on deaf ears with the judge.
as previously posted, sears holdings has incurred a lot of legal expense looking at the seritage and esl loan transactions for problems. even tho these were clearly driven by lampert (who at the time was ceo and chairman), those transactions had to be approved. if lampert has any liability, it would seem all board members, as well as certain officers of the company, would also be found liable. those legal bills also reflect examination of the d&o insurance parameters as well.
unless the review can definitively show there was some kind of fraud involved, it will probably be viewed as sour grapes.
while it has been typical in the real estate industry to have loans or lines of credit which were not secured by the real estate, after the 2008-2009 debacle, it certainly could not be viewed as self serving for lampert to have structured the loans to sears as secured loans with the security being some of the properties included in his current bid.
while no one else would loan money to sears the loans from lampert were a lifeline no one else would throw. conversely, the reason sears needed loans in the first place could be blamed on lampert's failure as ceo and chairman.
again, the board could have dismissed him years ago and didn't. while lampert's rule has been an disaster and he can be viewed in a very poor light, challenges to the portion of his bid which is credit based will have to be more than sour grapes.
monday will indeed be interesting and since the qualification of his bid will not have to be announced before jan 4th, there could be a few days of volatility to see how this plays out.
a rejection of his bid means liquidation and an acceptance might very well mean life for stockholders (of which lampert has a significant share).
in the relative scheme of things, lampert "wins" either way but he wins more by restructuring with current shareholders surviving.
