This is probably BS, but it's worth repeating. The grapevine says Eddie and David Simon are close to an agreement on selling all Sears and/or Seritage properties attached to Simon malls. Some stores would close, while others would start paying rent to Simon. It allegedly is a way to get some large cash infusion for Sears, thus kicking the can down the road and delaying bankruptcy.
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I would think Simon is smart enough to wait until Sears is in an even worse place before biting. One crappy anchor just makes me think OK that anchor s---s, and I know to park in their lot for easy parking.
A few years ago with multiple anchor stores doing poorly it was a different story.
Hopefully the rules in place will give Simon an edge and not allow Sears to just create a minimall in the mall.
And what of the Sears lications that are in leased sites?
He brew the best coffee?
As someone with similar heritage to Eddie and David, I'll throw this in the way my grandmother probably would have. No two people of our heritage could ever agree on a price for a deal this big.
@rfh I didn't bother to check how many of these malls have a Sears in them, but I added up the numbers in the list at http://www.simon.com/mall and it looks like Simon currently owns 215 malls in the US.
Is the stock moving on this rumor?
OP, how often do you find your grapevine to be correct?
Interesting read so basically at this point "Simon" has the ball on the court. Even if the properties are runed down as mentioned a price negotiation could be worked on aka getting a great price on the properties that would end up being sold. Question I ask is how many of those properties would be estimated sold if it were to happen?
qes - Simon is smart and Eddie is smart. They will agree on a price. This rumor is certainly possible and makes internal sense, unlike the nonsense about Amazon partnering with Sears. Further, Eddie is under a lot of pressure to sell some real estate that the pension fund released, they for sure have him on a short leash and they didn't give up their rights to those properties not get some cash out of it. Easier to sell a bunch of stores to one entity than to keep on doing the one-offs.
Simon needs to get hold of their destiny, and nothing hurts a mall worse than an underperforming anchor. Obviously this could be nothing but idle chatter, but at least it makes sense! Thanks for sharing OP!
"we all know Eddie has put overinflated prices on his structures."
They might be desperate enough at this point to give a 'bulk discount' though, perhaps.
"The mall is kept in immaculate condition, while the Sears store is a rundown property"
If the price is right, I could see Simon wanting to buy up Sears buildings just so they can be fixed up to look less crappy vs the rest of their malls.
Won't happen. And here's why. My city has a Sears at a Simon mall. The mall is kept in immaculate condition, while the Sears store is a rundown property (as is often the case). David and his uncle, Herb Simon, would be smart enough to not pay very much for Sears real estate. And we all know Eddie has put overinflated prices on his structures. That's evidenced by the number of places (mostly Kmarts) that have closed and still are for sale.