After years of Sears Holdings staying afloat through financial maneuvering and relying on billions of CEO Eddie Lampert's own money, the 125-year-old retailer filed for bankruptcy.
The filing comes more than a decade after Lampert merged Sears and Kmart, hoping that forging together the two struggling discounters would create a more formidable competitor.
It comes after Lampert shed assets and spun out real estate, all to pay down the debt the retailer accumulated when that plan went askew. The company still has roughly 700 stores, which have at times been barren, unstocked by vendors who have lost their trust. Many of the stores have never been visited by a generation of shoppers that can barely recall it was once the the country's biggest retailer.
Lampert, who has a controlling ownership stake in Sears, personally holds some 31 percent of the retailer's shares outstanding, according to FactSet. His hedge fund ESL Investments owns about 19 percent.
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