His bid and arguments have nothing to do with jobs. Liquidation was always the intended outcome - but the bidding is over who gets to control it.
Our jobs are only important to Eddie as long as they can be leveraged against competing bidders for emotional collateral put up to insulate himself from litigation.
Eddie didn't have to wait until the 11th hour to rally investors and "save jobs" or the company itself. He could've rounded up this $5 billion in investment capital months ago when he represented all stakeholders - including CEO, majority shareholder, creditor, landlord, etc. He could've saved the company from cannibalizing itself by investing in it's own infrastructure and marketing instead of using his hedge fund to create competing businesses like Seritage within his own holdings to manipulate the balance sheet and orchestrate this methodical and deliberate deterioration into bankruptcy.
That's the current hold up with the auction bid approval from yesterday. Everyone sees through Eddie's thin veil of sudden conscience. This is not the Grinch whose heart grew 3 times on Christmas and filled love for his employees after he strangely vows to correct the very chaos he purposefully created. His true agenda is obvious and has never wavered from the financial shell games he created to conceal his operational infidelity all along.
Seritage is the perfect case study on how to bankrupt your own business while simultaneously increasing your wealth and stake. He basically let ESL sell it's own real estate to itself and create massive operating losses for stores so more lucrative leases could be penned with competing retailers. in other words, ESL sold ESL it's own real estate so ESL could lease ESL the properties owned by ESL at an astronomical rate so that ESL incurred incredible operating losses - all so ESL could earn more. Brilliant, right?
That's why so many creditors and stakeholders have lost patience with the kangaroo court that judge drain presides over. ESL wins no matter what the outcome - it's just a matter of how much ESL wins during auction vs private liquidation.
Several articles today state the court wasn't even interested in hearing the competing bids and focused solely on Eddie's proposal. Very telling. Who knows what really went on during those closed door meetings but considering the judge's recent track record of extending deadlines to cater to Eddie's whims it seems plausible that those two Yale buddies are somehow in this together.
The movie rights to this retail saga are going to be worth a boat load and I'm sure Eddie has already secured those too.
This is a repost. PostID: @X8NXRCN-xeg