2023年3月27日,

三個法院已經駁回了企圖從蘭伯特和其他貸款人絞數以百萬計從剩下的前零售巨頭。發布2023年3月27日,達芙妮霍德蘭/零售潛水上周最高法院發表很難停止參數由西爾斯前任首席執行官艾迪·蘭伯特和其他銀行想要得到更多的錢剩下的陷入困境的零售商。多年來,似乎沒有盡頭西爾斯破產程序,即使它在技術上在2022年底總結三年爭議後,經過幾十年的鬥爭。蘭伯特與零售商的曆史始於近20年前作為一個投資者,他曾擔任CEO和董事會主席。他現在是大多數的老板後剩下的2018年申請破產。ESL投資,他的對衝基金和居魯士Capital Partners貸款人西爾斯控股公司蘭伯特,TransformCo(也稱為“新西爾斯”),和英語的律師和塞勒斯,這個故事沒有回複記者的置評請求。此案包圍了債權人的索賠,包括英語和塞勒斯,他們在破產法庭的抵押品被低估。原決定在2019年8月由法官Robert流失維持在上訴的兩倍。他們有7.18億美元的銀行計算出第一順位債權人支付後未支付的債務,因為4.335億美元的信貸出價低於他們的抵押品的價值,他們有更多的錢。他們占了上風,除了潛在的身上榨出數億美元的西爾斯,蘭伯特的基金和其它貸款機構認為破產法的一個部分,507 (b),,會損害其他債權人,允許他們“super-priority聲稱步驟之前,每個人,”威廉·諾頓說,合夥人布拉德利Arant篩子卡明斯,破產專家。 The courts’ math Drain, however, found they were owed nothing, and that 507(b) didn’t apply. In their appeal in November of 2019 in district court, Lampert and the other lenders claimed that Drain “applied a hypothetical liquidation valuation, which valued the collateral at hundreds of millions of dollars less than its actual replacement cost — even though no such liquidation actually occurred for the bulk of the collateral in question.” “The bankruptcy court compounded this error by applying a starting ‘net orderly liquidation value’” standard that undervalued their collateral, they also said. This was a middle-of-the-road assessment of the lenders’ collateral, according to Stu Komrower, a partner at law firm Cole Schotz who specializes in bankruptcy and corporate restructuring. Broadly, the three yardsticks available in estimating the worth of creditors’ collateral — in this case, mostly Sears’ inventory — are: retail value, fire-sale liquidation value, or net orderly liquidation value. Drain employed the last one, also known as NOLV, which falls somewhere in between the other two. It reflects the value of inventory sold during an orderly going-out-of-business sale. “So it was a little bit of a ‘split the baby’ in terms of valuation,” Komrower said by phone. “But I think the judge, who is a very highly regarded, very smart judge, took the right approach, and had a practical orientation, with some substantive backup for that practical orientation.” Lampert’s appeals couldn’t overcome that. The Southern District of New York district court, then the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, each in turn endorsed the bankruptcy court’s original reasoning and math. And last week, with the words “certiorari denied,” the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, leaving Drain’s initial decision intact. Absent a significant or contentious legal issue, or the need to resolve incongruous district-court decisions, the high court wasn’t likely to take up this case, our experts said. And so that is the end of the line for Eddie Lampert, at least for this particular aspect of Sears’ long-running bankruptcy. “It’s done, it’s over. He’s out of there, move on,” Komrower said. “The Supreme Court has spoken by not speaking.”