Edward Lampert and His White Whale, Sears
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A sears store in Salem, N.H. Sears shares have lost nearly 90 percent of their value since 2007.CreditElise Amendola/Associated Press
A tragic figure in American literature has an analog in modern finance. Once upon a time, the billionaire investor Edward S. Lampert was hailed as the next Warren E. Buffett. These days, his decade-plus obsession with the struggling retailer Sears resembles Captain Ahab’s with Moby-Dick.
Mr. Lampert was a hedge fund star when he took the discount store Kmart out of bankruptcy in 2003 and merged it with Sears two years later. A devotee of Ayn Rand and Mr. Buffett, Mr. Lampert had parlayed $28 million of seed corn into a spot on the Forbes rich list by making savvy bets on undervalued companies…
Edward Lampert and His White Whale, Sears
