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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAyn Rand-loving CEO destroys his empire
Once upon a time, hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert was living a Wall Street fairy tale. His fairy godmother was Ayn Rand, the dashing diva of free-market ideology whose quirky economic notions would transform him into a glamorous business hero.
For a while, it seemed to work like a charm. Pundits called him the Steve Jobs of the investment world. The new Warren Buffett. By 2006 he was flying high, the richest man in Connecticut, managing over $15 billion thorough his hedge fund, ESL Investments.
Stoked by his Wall Street success, Lampert plunged headlong into the retail world. Undaunted by his lack of industry experience and hailed a genius, Lampert boldly pushed to merge Kmart and Sears with a layoff and cost-cutting strategy that would, he promised, send profits into the stratosphere. Meanwhile the hotshot threw cash around like an oil sheikh, buying a $40 million pad in Floridas Biscayne Bay, a record even for that star-studded county.
Fast-forward to 2013: The fairy tale has become a nightmare.
Lampert is now known as one of the worst CEOs in America the man who flushed Sears down the toilet with his demented management style and harebrained approach to retail. Sears stock is tanking. His hedge fun is down 40 percent, and the business press has turned from praising Lamperts genius towatching gleefully as his ship sinks. Investors are running from Crazy Eddie like the plague.
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroys_his_empire_partner/
hadrons
(4,170 posts)Those guys followed the Ass Rancid "philosophy" and ended up in bankruptcy
Nay
(12,051 posts)go straight down the tubes over the past 10 years. I used to shop there all the time for clothes for work. I want them back.
Tikki
(14,559 posts)People were budgeting like mad to make ends meet and then the due dates would be moved, at least once
with no notice we could find.
Paid off the balance and cut up the cards
.never again.
The Tikkis