End Of An Era - Sears Declares Bankruptcy

By Staff
Monday, October 15, 2018 12:38 AM EDT


Image Source: Mike Kaslasnik, Flickr
 

Breaking News...

Sears Holdings (SHLD) has finally made it official early this morning - it has announced is has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The 132-year-old company changed the way Americans shopped but has suffered heavy losses for the past several years. It faced intense competition from online stores such as Amazon (AMZN) and had to contend with a general trend for shoppers to visit big box stores like Walmart (WMT) over department stores.

Sears Holdings, the parent company for Sears and Kmart, has also been weighed down by debt and other obligations such as its pensions which total $300 million per year. In fact the company has paid nearly $2 billion into pension plans in the past five years, and $4.5 billion since Sears and Kmart merged in 2005.

The move is not a surprise as the company had a debt payment of $134 million due today which it was not expected to be able to pay.

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Comments

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Shiela J. Ramey • 4 years ago • Member's comment

Nice.I like it

Talia D. Henry • 4 years ago • Member's comment

Useful information.

Rose B. Cates • 4 years ago • Member's comment

Its really very helpful information for me.

Alissa K Ray • 4 years ago • Member's comment

Nice post, Keep it up!

William K. • 5 years ago • Member's comment

The article was a lot shorter than I had expected, more like an obituary, actually. Except that there don't appear to be any survivors that would have been listed. But once again this shows that there is no business so great that a string of bad choices can't kill it.

Frank Underwood • 5 years ago • Member's comment

I think it was the pension plans that killed #Sears. Newer companies like #Amazon don't have to contend with that at all. It cost Sears billions that it could have used to generate revenue. I think that more than anything else is what sealed $SHLD's fate.

Danny Straus • 5 years ago • Member's comment

It's mostly #Amazon. $AMZN is absolutely wiping other companies out.

Alpha Stockman • 5 years ago • Member's comment

Good one. "Like an obituary..." I like that! But this was breaking news and published pretty quickly after the news broke. I actually read about it here first. Breaking news stories are always short since there isn't much info out there yet.

I did see a follow up article on $SHLD today though: www.talkmarkets.com/.../american-icon-sears-run-into-ground