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| 17. Edward Lampert / $400 million | ||
| Title: Founder and chief executive officer Firm: ESL Investments (Bay Harbour, Florida) Age: 51 2013 Rank: No. 10 (tied) 2013 Earnings: $400 million 2012 Rank: No. 6 2012 Earnings: $750 million Years on list: 9 | Source of 2013 earnings: Sears Holdings Corp., AutoNation, Gap Education: BA in economics, Yale University, 1984 | |
Ten years ago BusinessWeek magazine declared ESL Investments founder Edward Lampert to be the next Warren Buffett. But that was before Lampert’s massive investment in ailing retailer Sears, Roebuck & Co. threatened to torpedo his reputation for good. Last year disgruntled investors showed they were losing patience with Lampert’s big bet, pulling some of their money out of ESL and forcing him to distribute shares of AutoNation and Sears Holdings Corp. at various times to meet redemptions. Late last year ESL’s holdings of Sears dropped below 50 percent for the first time. Lampert reported that his Bay Harbour, Florida, firm had $4.2 billion in assets under management as of December 31, 2013. This was down from $5.1 billion one year ago and $17.5 billion as recently as 2007. Still, Sears’ stock jumped 18.6 percent last year, with the company accounting for a little more than half of ESL’s $2.5 billion in equity assets at year-end. Two of ESL’s other three holdings in its highly concentrated portfolio fared well too: AutoNation gained 25.2 percent, and Gap rose 25.9 percent. As a result, ESL’s net return for 2013 is believed to be somewhere in the midteens, allowing Lampert to qualify for the Rich List for the ninth time. Part of his gains come from personal holdings in Sears and AutoNation: Lampert, who previously worked on the famed risk arbitrage desk headed by Robert Rubin at Goldman, Sachs & Co., is now very close to being a bigger shareholder in Sears than ESL.
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