Edward Lampert’s new Sears was pushed by a bankruptcy judge yesterday to smooth over its disagreements with the entity left behind in bankruptcy protection, the Wall Street Journal reported. Mr. Lampert’s new Sears, known as Transform Holdco LLC, and the old Sears, still known as Sears Holdings Corp., have been sparring over the terms of new Sears’s purchase of the company’s assets. On Thursday, Judge Robert Drain in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, N.Y., set aside new Sears’s mediation request and encouraged the two entities to try to resolve their dispute. The new Sears took the first swing in early March, when it claimed old Sears breached its asset-purchase agreement by intentionally delaying payments to vendors and shortchanging the new company on promised inventory. Old Sears fired back, asking a bankruptcy judge to force new Sears to pay it $57.5 million. Mr. Lampert’s ESL Investments won court approval in February to purchase 425 Sears and Kmart stores for $5.2 billion, and the deal closed days later. The old Sears remains under bankruptcy protection as it works on a chapter 11 plan that will determine how much investors, vendors and professionals recover from the sale proceeds.
