Sears Holdings Corp. is inching closer to a financial lifeline that it needs to avoid running out of cash while it pursues a turnaround, Bloomberg reported. The new loan won’t involve Sears Chairman Eddie Lampert’s hedge fund, ESL Investments Inc., despite the company’s initial plan for the executive’s firm to arrange that leg of financing. Lampert, through ESL, owns the majority of Sears’s debt in addition to being its primary shareholder. Instead, the retailer has made an unusual pitch to senior lenders: if the banks release certain assets securing their own debtor-in-possession loan, Sears will produce a third-party lender to buy half of that debt, plus provide the remainder of what the company needs. The latest financing effort has come together over a series of meetings with the lender banks, who would agree to extend Sears only $300 million of a requested $600 million in bankruptcy financing last month.
