mehdi,
i did this a number of weeks ago as well.
while they did discuss establishing an equity committee, don't believe this ever happened. now that the apa and lampert's deal has been approved, there's even less for them to fight over, absent the tax assets, and i think even that is arguable.
re: the houlihan comments, i had posted comments from old sears advisors that they viewed keeping the tax assets and trying to reorganize around them as speculative, at best, and more value would be realized by including them in lampert's purchase offer.
as to your speculation this might still be in play, according to the documents filed, all of the stores which old sears controls right now, the documents indicate they are all undergoing gobs. some of those will be turned over to lampert as part of his purchase deal and i believe the others will be monetized to pay off administrative claims and creditors.
i think the lands end analysis as well as the seritage transactions were being examined in house to assess any liability they might have for approving those deals with lampert.
a recent filing indicates the unsecured creditor's committee is retaining a conflicts counsel. i believe this is all in preparation to litigate against lampert. while i have no doubt there will be a number of actions brought against lampert, unless lampert were to just throw more money at them to make it go away, seems to me that lampert could countersue since all of the transactions were approved by advisors and directors of the company who were not insiders.
this type of things is why companies have directors and officers liability insurance. i would think, unless truly illegal activity took place around these various asset stripping transactions, that lampert would have some type of action against the insurance company if they were to deny representing and covering him on these matters.
at any rate, expect lampert to be involved in litigation.
