Eddie Lampert on the retailer’s woes: ‘I deeply regret the failure of Sears Canada’

When the final Sears Canada stores closed their doors in Jaunary, it marked the end of more than 65 years for the chain in Canada.  (RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO)

Eddie Lampert, the largest shareholder of Sears Canada, explains the financial situation around the retailer’s final years.

U.S. hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert has something to say about the decline and fall of Sears Canada.

Quite a lot, in fact.

As a major investor in the company over the past 13 years, in part through his hedge fund, ESL Investments, and through Sears Holdings Inc., of which he is chairman and chief executive officer, Lampert has been blamed for the failure of the department store chain in this country.

More than $600 million in dividends that were paid to Sears Canada shareholders in 2012 and 2013 are under review as part of the insolvency process still winding its way through Ontario Superior Court after Sears stores closed for good in January.

In the following Q&A with the Star, Lampert discusses what he believes went wrong at Sears Canada, why it couldn’t be fixed and why paying dividends was sound business.

“There is a false narrative that somehow ESL made a lot of money on Sears Canada when, in fact, it has lost a significant amount,” according to Lampert.

Eddie Lampert is chairman and chief executive officer of Sears Holdings Inc., and founder, chairman and CEO of ESL Investments.  (CANDICE C. CUSIC/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TNS FILE PHOTO)

“I deeply regret the failure of Sears Canada and the impact it has had on the lives of its employees,” he writes.

“I know on a very personal level what it’s like to have somebody depend on a company to provide for her family. I know what it’s like to have a parent who has to live with the uncertainty of whether or not they are going to keep their job in order to pay their bills, because after my father died when I was 14, my mother worked at Saks Fifth Avenue for 20 years.