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When a shareholder recently requested that Sears Holdings consider going private, the investment company was not suggesting a new idea.
The investor, Memento S.A., released a letter Dec. 7, asking the retailer “to form a board to look after shareholders, to temporarily suspend short-selling in Sears’ stock, and to evaluate strategic alternatives that include going private,” CNBC reports. Sears has not responded publicly to the request.
Sears has now faced six years of decreasing sales, according to Reuters. And, earlier in the company’s decline, rumors that the retailer might go private made the news.
“It would make sense to be private, but they still have to improve the operating structure and costs, pension, etc., then reinvest in stores, and then get appliances to sell again,” analyst Paul Swinand says in a Reuters article from January 2012.
If Sears were to stop trading on the public stock exchange, it could potentially do so for the reasons department store chain Nordstrom is making steps to go private.
If Nordstrom becomes a private company, it “would be able to make investments that would help it adapt to the changing retail landscape without worrying about short-term shareholder reaction,” CNBC reports in an October article.
