Sears Holdings Corp. has hired M-III Partners LLC to prepare a bankruptcy filing that could come as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the situation, as the cash-strapped company that once dominated American retailing faces a debt payment deadline.
Employees at M-III Partners, a boutique advisory firm, have spent the past few weeks working on the potential filing, the people said. In recent days, M-III staff have been at the retailer’s headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Ill., one person said. Sears continues to discuss other options and could still avert an in-court restructuring, the people added.
Read: These 5 retailers are following Sears into irrelevance
Sears SHLD, -5.99% , which has been losing money for years, has $134 million in debt due on Monday. Edward Lampert, the hedge-fund manager who is Sears’s chairman, chief executive, largest shareholder and biggest creditor, could rescue the company, as he has done in the past by making the payment.
But Lampert is pushing for a broader restructuring that would include shaving more than $1 billion from Sears’s $5.5 billion debt load, selling another $1.5 billion of real estate and divesting $1.75 billion of assets, including the Kenmore appliance brand, which he has offered $400 million to buy himself.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
Also popular on WSJ.com:
Nikki Haley to resign as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Thousands of Southerners planted trees for retirement. It didn’t work.
