At its peak in the 2000s, Sears had as many as 5,670 stores. Now, only around 40 are still operating.

The Fall and Fall of America’s Department Store

Eddie Lampert was a Wall Street wunderkind until he got his hands on Sears and, later, Kmart. He would become the scourge of one of the U.S.’s favorite retail franchises

By William D. Cohan

In July 2017, I interviewed hedge-fund manager Eddie Lampert at his mansion overlooking Long Island Sound. Ever since Lampert was kidnapped from his Greenwich, Connecticut, office parking garage, in January 2003—he managed to escape from the $49-a-night motel room and his bungling kidnappers after 28 brutal hours—he has been understandably reluctant to appear in public or speak to the media. Ours was his first extended conversation with a journalist in about 15 years.

At the time, Lampert was the C.E.O. of Sears Holdings, the company that then owned Sears and Kmart, and the chairman of its board of directors, which had also included Steve Mnuchin, Lampert’s roommate at Yale and later Donald Trump’s secretary of the Treasury. Lampert, a Wall Street wunderkind who made his billions investing in the likes of AutoZone, AutoNation, Honeywell, Liz Claiborne, and Saatchi & Saatchi, had bought the distressed bonds of Kmart in 2003—shortly before his kidnapping—and then used the bankruptcy process to turn them into a majority-ownership stake in the discount retailer. Two years later, Lampert merged Kmart with Sears to create Sears Holdings. It’s been an unmitigated disaster since then.