End Stage Looting by an Ayn Rand Fan

About a year and a half ago, I observed how the hedge fund operator who is running Sears according to the principles of Ayn Rand is running the venerable retail institution into the ground.

After many years of mismanagement and looting, he is now looking to buy its remaining assets at a cut-rate price.

To use Ayn Rand's language, he is a looter, not a creator:

Edward S. Lampert, the chief executive of Sears, offered on Monday to buy real estate assets and the Kenmore brand from the troubled retailer in what would be his latest attempt to save it.

In a letter to the Sears board, Mr. Lampert, whose ESL Investments hedge fund owns a controlling stake in the company, said ESL would be also be willing to buy the retailer’s home-services and its appliance-parts units.

Any deal involving Sears and Mr. Lampert is complicated by his dual roles running both the retailer and the hedge fund, which is also a major Sears lender.

………

In his letter to the board, Mr. Lampert offered to pay Sears $500 million for the home-services and appliance-parts units, but did not mention a price for the Kenmore brand or the real estate. He noted that the company had been trying to sell the assets for nearly two years, but had failed to find other buyers.

He failed to find another buyer because he has completely destroyed the company.

I will leave it to the reader to determine whether this is because he indented to drive its value down so that he could snap up its parts for a song all along, which is a fairly typical hedge fund behavior, or if he was simply wedded to a philosophy (Objectivism) which is completely antithetical to a business that actually makes, or does, something of value.