Lampert would certainly get my vote as worst industry executive ever. In this case, we’re not talking about a few strategic blunders – this is systemic and consistent failure due to very bad, traumatic decisions it appears he has made unilaterally. I have no sympathy for Lampert. And while his asset stripping is disgraceful, more importantly he has stripped the careers and pensions from hundreds of thousands of working people, and that’s unforgivable.

You can’t talk about “worst” retail executives without mentioning Bob Nardelli or Ron Johnson. Especially Nardelli. You had to work hard to have decreasing comp sales during the real estate boom of the early 2000s. The thing about Lampert is this was always his end game — getting the real estate. What was Nardelli’s or Johnson’s excuse?

But we should also ask who the best have been. Nardelli was followed by Frank Blake, who magnificently cleaned up the mess.

I find it stomach-turning to read all of these analyses in the wake of the filing about “where it all went wrong” and how doing these two or three things would’ve saved Sears. I think Lampert’s only regret is that he couldn’t stretch out the charade a few more years and eke a few more dollars out of laying waste to an iconic brand. And that otherwise, this was a plan well-designed and well-executed: how to extract as much value out of Sears as is humanly possible.

Can’t say it better George! Yes, even worse than Ron Johnson and what he did to J.C. Penney.

We’re not in the trenches to see exactly what went on but certainly from the periphery and knowing all of the financial hijinx he has implemented at Sears to personally benefit from Sears’ slow demise – I’d have to say “hell yeah” — not only the worst retail executive ever, one of the worst human beings ever ….

I’m filling in the blank with “retailer.” He doesn’t have a clue about retailing and has never run Sears as a retailer. All of his actions have been financial and often to his own benefit. They have never been concerned with building up Sears or ensuring its long-term survival.

It is true that Sears had issues long before Eddie came on the scene. However, he is the author of its current fate and no amount of faux handwringing will change that. The markets know it, lenders know it, the public knows it and, most importantly, those who work for Sears know it.

He may come out of this in a good financial position, but his reputation is in tatters. And deservedly so.

The only ones who would defend Mr. Lampert are those who would admire a person’s cunning in ruining a business and negatively impacting so many employees, all for his own benefit. Lampert can’t be the “worst” because that would imply that he didn’t know what he was doing. But he did know.

Retail is a business of constant change and innovation. That has been proven out more in the last decade than maybe ever before. And what change or innovation can Sears take credit for? Can they even take credit for having kept up with the market on anything? A current visit to a Sears store is a visit to the prior century. Couldn’t they have just copied Best Buy, or Primark, or given Lands’ End the shot they really deserved? Something? Anything? NOTHING! It’s remarkable to note that they refused to learn from what they saw going on around them. So why would a smaller store count unburdened from the debt load succeed in a new life? Where does Sears compete successfully? Appliances and home electronics? How long will it take them to rise to Best Buy’s level? I’d rather invest in buggy whips.

Well, we’re certainly not beating around the bush with this discussion! Yes, Lampert did a horrible job. But, as others have pointed out, it seems highly unlikely that Lampert ever really intended on turning Sears around. It’s just a sad state of affairs all around, and unfortunately, Sears’ employees will bear the brunt of it.

At least Ron Johnson had a strategy, no matter how misguided and lacking in “beta testing,” to improve a stagnant company’s fortunes. (Instead, he almost ran it into the ground.) Right now, Lampert is in a class by himself even though “worst ever” is a high bar to clear. What separates him from the pack is his pattern of bleeding the company assets to feather his own nest.

I would not want to be one of those 1.000 headquarters employees — no doubt hardworking professionals in every functional area from buying to accounts payable to IT — listening to Mr. Lampert’s claptrap yesterday. To put the onus of survival on their shoulders (with a 90-day window) is grossly unfair, considering the litany of Lampert’s own bad decisions and financial manipulation that has led Sears to this sad place.

It’s hard for me to believe that the demise of Sears under Mr. Lampert’s guidance should be viewed as a failure. I tend to believe that after Mr. Lampert took control and assessed the state of Sears, he planned to manipulate the situation within the law to surgically extract as much cash for himself and his accomplices as possible for as long as they could while knowing how the last chapter would be written. Another sad example of the ugly and greed-motivated underside of capitalism.

My top vote in the “worst” category is Terry Lundgren, especially since somehow he still gets accolades from the press for disguising the fact that he totally ruined the department store as we knew it. But I must say, Eddie is Definitely in the top three worst of all time! He’s up there simply for not embracing where consumers were moving to fast enough. Sears’ (and his) inability to take bold leaps cost them in the end (see Walmart for instructions on that).

Yes. Lampert is the retail version of pharma CEO-turned-inmate Martin Shkreli. His decisions to ignore retail upheaval, and hedge his bets to guarantee he profits regardless of Sears’ performance harmed his employees, investors and vendors.

There was plenty of time to “reinvent” Sears and make it a potentially different but successful chain. There’s a reason that such financial acquirers were called “vulture funds.” This wasn’t the first, and unfortunately won’t be the last financial-engineered asset strip. I wish these greedy geniuses could meet the 100,000+ Sears associates who are now looking for work.

Morally corrupt, the legacy of Mr. Lampert. It is heartening in a world of constant “spinning” for financial and political gain that a human moral compass still exists within us, the rank and file.

Sorry, I am late to the party! Not so much love for one of the worst CEOs in modern business history. Eddie Lampert’s tenure at Sears has to go down as one of the retail industry tragedies of the 21st century. Empires rise and fall, and unfortunately, Lampert’s lack of leadership, vision, and overall horrible decision making have led Sears on a nightmarish downward spiral for the past 15 years. There are countless numbers of CEO horror stories. One that comes to mind is Tom Johnson’s tenure at Aeropostale, a teenage apparel company that was riding high during the early to mid-2000s. Having worked there during the glory years, before Tom Johnson, the company had the right leadership, vision, and strategy. All of that was lost when Tom Johnson took over, and the company almost went completely bankrupt. Culture and the right leadership are everything. Lost in all of the publicity about the loss of Sears, are the passionate, dedicated current and former employees whose salaries, pensions are livelihoods will be stripped from them.

I’ve watched the fall of Sears for several years now. Despite the push in this thread to criticize Lampert, I never walked his shoes, never faced his decisions, never put up with all the criticism that the media, his competitors, investors, employees and others engaged in. If there’s anything that I can be sure of, it’s his reputation amongst the retail elite has been destroyed. Frankly, I doubt my opinion of him matters at this point. I have some great friends at Sears. I also had some great friends at Sears. Read this letter from a senior exec at Sears Holding. It’s testament to the fact that Sears did have a pulse and the inner workings that few of us will know, and even fewer still will endure long after Sears is gone. If there’s anything I can say with conviction about Lampert — he’s a poor PR strategist. I’m certain many other execs have the skills, support structure and ability to pull off far worse than he did while maintaining a great public persona.… Read more »

Mr. Lampert is, in my opinion, an evil genius. He has been dismembering Sears/Kmart over a period of years with one apparent goal in mind: Extract the maximum value possible for shareholders (i.e. himself). Serving customers is of no consequence. Serving employees even less so.

His shrewd tactics are not even original. In its final days, the legendary discount store chain EJ Korvette was shuttered overnight in 1980, when its new owners calculated that the potential lease income from its owned properties could far exceed the profits it could take by selling merchandise.

The recent Ch. 11 announcement allows Lampert to continue to stretch out this process. The alternative — Ch. 7 liquidation — would have dumped the remaining properties onto the market and probably depress their value.

Saddest aspect of this whole slow-motion train wreck is the way employees are being treated, with an enormous pension obligation hanging in the balance.

Worst ever — no defense. Lampert did not just lose lots of money for his shareholders and loss of jobs for his employees, he completely destroyed the Sears brand. Sears does not stand for anything anymore. He was not ruthless; he was clueless on running the company to create value. He never had the vision to evolve as the major retailer Sears once was, and he let Amazon become the major retailer who took advantage of the online world.