Sears chairman Eddie Lampert has a net worth of $1 billion - from a $130 million yacht to a home on 'billionaire bunker' island, here's how he spends his fortune

Mark Abadi

Jan 9, 2019, 04:32 IST

Sears chairman Eddie Lampert has a net worth of $1 billion - from a $130 million yacht to a home on 'billionaire bunker' island, here's how he spends his fortune

REUTERS/Peter Morgan PM

Sears chairman Eddie Lampert.

Eddie Lampert, the chairman and former CEO of Sears, has an estimated net worth of $1 billion.
Lampert owns three homes, including one on the wealthy "Billionaire Bunker" island in Florida, and also owns a $130 million yacht.
Lampert is a member of the ultra-exclusive Skull and Bones society at Yale University.
In 2003, he was kidnapped and held at gunpoint - only to negotiate his way free.

Eddie Lampert, the chairman and former CEO of Sears, has had an eventful career.

With an estimated net worth of $1 billion, Lampert was once hailed as a genius hedge-fund manager and the next Warren Buffett. He's a member of Yale's ultra-exclusive Skull and Bones secret society, along with three former presidents, and his college roommate was eventual US Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin.

He also managed to save Kmart from bankruptcy in the early 2000s, but not before he was kidnapped and held at gunpoint for 30 hours in a Connecticut hotel. He reportedly talked his captors into releasing him, then capped off the Kmart deal a week later.

Now, after Lampert merged Kmart with Sears, the department store is now on the brink of liquidation.

Lampert has garnered criticism for his management of Sears, which he reportedly runs from his sprawling, $38 million estate in a wealthy Florida community known as "billionaire bunker." The wealthy executive also owns houses in Connecticut and Colorado, not to mention a $130 million yacht.

Read on to see how Sears' embattled chairman made - and spends - his $1 billion fortune.

Eddie Lampert, 56, is the chairman of Sears Holdings, the company that owns Sears and Kmart.

Lampert's net worth is an estimated $1 billion, and he hasn't been shy about spending: He owns three sprawling homes and a $130 million yacht.

But Lampert wasn't always this wealthy. Although he grew up in an affluent family in Roslyn, New York, life changed at age 14 when his father, a successful attorney, died of a heart attack. Lampert helped his family make ends meet by taking jobs at warehouses stocking shelves and packing boxes.

Lampert attended Yale University with the help of financial aid and student loans. His roommate was Steven Mnuchin, who would eventually work for Lampert's hedge fund and go on to become US Secretary of the Treasury.

While at Yale, Lampert was inducted into the ultra-exclusive Skull and Bones, a secret society whose short list of members includes business magnates, political elites, and three former presidents.

After school, Lampert interned for Goldman Sachs and then founded a hedge fund, ESL Investments. One of his biggest moments as an investor came when he began purchasing AutoZone shares in 1998. After driving up the price of the shares, he sold them in 2012 for about $1.5 billion.

Lampert's 'unnatural patience' and investing style led financial media to dub him the next Warren Buffett. Time magazine called him part of the 'new breed' of hedge fund managers and one of the 'brightest minds on Wall Street.'

In 2003, he bought Kmart out of bankruptcy and took control of the company, enacting several cost-cutting measures that kept the company alive.

But a week before the deal was made official, Lampert was abducted from the garage of his Connecticut office building. His four kidnappers held him in a hotel for two days and told him they had been offered $3 million to kill him.

Law-enforcement officials said Lampert may have saved his own life by negotiating to pay his captors $5 million. They dropped him off along a highway and he walked to nearby police station. Police traced the kidnappers through stolen credit-card transactions.

Lampert sealed the Kmart deal the next week. The Wall Street Journal called his abduction 'one of the most unexpected events ever to factor into a major corporate restructuring.'

A year later, Lampert merged Kmart with Sears. Since the merger, Sears has seen a steep decline, and is now on the verge of liquidation.

Lampert now stays out of the spotlight, and has been described as 'reclusive.' He rarely visits Sears headquarters in Chicago, instead running the company from his Florida home. He and his wife Kinga Lampert have 3 children.

That home, located in the wealthy Indian Creek community off Miami's coast, is a sprawling estate worth $38 million.

The 86 residents of Indian Creek include Enrique Iglesias, Adriana Lima, Don Shula, and Carl Icahn. The island has been called 'Billionaire bunker' because of its private police force.

Lampert also owns a $26 million property in Connecticut, a $14.5 million home in Colorado, and a 288-foot yacht called Fountainhead.

Source: Business Insider

Lampert's wealth stands in stark contrast to the state of Sears stores, some of which are plagued by empty shelves and damaged interiors.

Lampert now appears to have one last chance to save the department store, with a judge set to assess his $4.4 billion takeover bid on Monday.

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