Lamperts a Huge Loser: $30M/hour

Date: Monday, October 27, 2008
Author: Richard Wilner, New York Post

Even for a billionaire hedge-fund titan, losing $30 million an hour has got to be a bummer.

That's what Eddie Lampert, the chairman of Sears Holdings, has experienced with just his nine largest holdings since Sept. 19 - over just 26 trading days.

His massive holdings in Sears Holding, the parent of Sears and Kmart stores, and in AutoZone, AutoNation, Citigroup and five other companies have lost $5 billion in value over that time, based on the size of the holdings as of June 30, according to his 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The biggest hit - by far - came from the steep drop in Sears Holdings, which fell from $103 in mid-September to $47.67 on Friday, a drop of 53.7 percent that translated into a paper loss of $3.6 billion for Lampert's 65.3 million shares.

Lampert's Greenwich, Conn.-based ESL Investments saw its holdings in the eight companies fall by an average of $193 million each trading day - which translates into $30 million an hour for each of the 6 1/2-hour trading days.

The investor lost about $587 million on Auto Nation, $480 million on AutoZone, $174.7 million on Home Depot and $162.4 million on Citigroup. The group of nine companies fell 39.4 percent over the 26 trading days - compared with a 26.4 percent drop for the Dow Jones industrial average.