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Sears Holdings Corp. has decided to forgo selecting a lead bidder for the auction of its stores amid criticism from creditors of a bid by the retailer’s chairman, Edward Lampert, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The company’s lawyers and advisers didn’t select a so-called stalking horse bidder, which would set the floor price for the auction, by the deadline last week, and instead have decided to push for more bidders to make offers before the Dec. 28 final bid deadline, Sears attorney Ray Schrock said Tuesday at a hearing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, N.Y. The beleaguered retailer has already received multiple bids, including offers from liquidation firms to close some or all of the stores, as well as bids for specific assets or divisions, rather than the chain as a whole. At Tuesday’s hearing, Sears won approval to sell its home-improvement services business to Service.com for $60 million, for example. Liquidation firms Tiger Capital Group LLC and Great American Group LLC have teamed up, and Gordon Brothers Retail Partners LLC and Hilco Global Merchant Resources LLC have joined forces in submitting bids. Read more. 

In related news, Sears will take a charge of about $443 million arising from store closures, a regulatory filing showed yesterday, Reuters reported. The company said some of the charges have already been incurred in the third quarter, while the remaining charges will be booked in the fourth quarter. Total costs related to closing 73 Sears stores and 28 Kmart stores in the third quarter ended Nov. 3 amounted to $229 million, the company said earlier this month. The charges entail markdowns, severance costs and lease termination costs arising from store closures, which the company announced in October, when it filed for chapter 11 protection. Sears Chairman Eddie Lampert made a $4.6 billion offer to buy the U.S. retailer earlier this month, which called for about 500 Sears stores to remain open. Read more. 

U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge signed off on Friday on Sears’ request to pay up to $25.3 million in bonuses to top executives and other high-ranking employees even as the company reported losing nearly $1.9 billion in the first three quarters this year, the Chicago Tribune reported. Hoffman Estates-based Sears Holdings Corp., which filed for bankruptcy protection in October, said it needs to able to offer the extra cash to encourage key employees to stick with the company as it attempts to restructure, according to court filings. The company’s proposal offers bonuses totaling up to $8.4 million to 19 executives if the company achieves certain financial targets over the next six months. Those employees also would be eligible for bonuses if the company is on track to hit those targets when it’s sold, an attorney for Sears said at the hearing. The retailer also got permission to set aside up to $16.9 million in retention bonuses for a separate group of 315 senior employees. Each could receive a cash award equivalent to 30 to 40 percent of his or her salary, split into quarterly payments over the next year.

Despite closing dozens of stores and laying off 200 corporate employees as it tried to stave off a bankruptcy filing, Sears racked up nearly $1.9 billion in losses in the nine months ending Nov. 3, the Chicago Tribune reported. That’s more than triple the sum the Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based department store chain reported in the same nine-month period in 2017, according to a quarterly financial report filed yesterday. More than half those losses came during the three months leading up to Nov. 3, during which Sears filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Sears slashed costs by about 25 percent during the first nine months of this fiscal year compared with the same period in 2017, according to the filing. But sales of merchandise and services dropped faster over the same nine-month period.

When Mike Isabella filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in September, the former “Top Chef” star had hoped the company reorganization would stop the financial bleeding and “get me back to where I was” six months earlier, before a former manager accused him and his partners of sexual harassment, the Washington Post reported. He was, in short, fighting for a second chance to win over Washington diners who had helped his restaurant group grow into one of the largest in town. But in a chapter 7 filing on Tuesday, which seeks to operate six restaurants through Dec. 27 before closing them permanently, Isabella argues that the local and national media relentlessly threw shade on his business operations even after he agreed to a confidential settlement in May with former Isabella Eatery manager, Chloe Caras, who sued for “extraordinary sexual harassment.”

A Cincinnati-based restaurant chain with four Tri-State locations that's known for its burgers and craft beer has filed for bankruptcy protection in hopes of remaining open while it pays back creditors, the Cincinnati Business Courier reported. Flipdaddy's Brilliant Burgers & Craft Beer Bar, with locations in Newport, Mariemont, Symmes Township and Union, Ky., filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on Dec. 6. According to its filing, the company owes more than $2.3 million to 19 creditors. Flipdaddy's was founded in Mariemont by Bob Dames in 2010 and opened a restaurant a year in each of the next three years. It opened a fifth location in Orange Beach, Ala., in 2017, which has since closed. Dames has since left the restaurant, opening Alto Pizza Kitchen in Covington in July. Tom Sacco took over as CEO of Flipdaddy's in March.

Toys “R” Us Inc. and some foreign subsidiaries got approval Thursday for their joint chapter 11 bankruptcy plan, which includes the $760 million sale of the Asian business, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The Asian business of Toys “R” Us has been considered healthy, and a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond, Va., yesterday approved the sale of that operation to a new ownership group that includes existing bondholders that have said that they plan to operate the business. Of that $760 million offer, about half is a credit bid, meaning that the lenders will trade their debt for ownership of the business.

Sears Holdings Corp., the bankrupt retailer, owes money to vendors for everything from lawn mowers to washing machines. Those companies are increasingly worried the department store company will bleed too much cash to repay them in full, Bloomberg News reported. The vendors are selling their legal claims against Sears to hedge funds like Whitebox Advisors and Cherokee Debt Acquisition, with over $24 million of unpaid bills having changed hands so far, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of court filings. Whitebox has snapped up the vast majority of the debt. Cherokee has offered vendors between 55 and 70 cents on the dollar for the paper. Investment bank Jefferies Financial Group Inc. has also been seeking to buy the claims for 55 cents and sell them for 65 cents as recently as this week, according to people with knowledge of the market prices. Sears vendors including Electrolux AB, Sub-Zero and Perfect Fit Industries are among those that have chosen to get cash now, according to the court filings.

U.S. consumer prices were unchanged in November, held back by a sharp decline in the price of gasoline, but underlying inflation pressures remained firm amid rising rents and healthcare costs, Reuters reported. The strength in underlying inflation reported by the Labor Department on Wednesday supports views that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its Dec. 18-19 policy meeting. The U.S. central bank has hiked rates three times this year. But with oil prices tumbling, financial market conditions tightening and economic growth slowing, some economists believe the Fed could settle for fewer rate increases in 2019.

RMH Franchise Holdings Inc., the nation’s second-largest Applebee’s franchisee, won final bankruptcy court approval of a reorganization that earlier was opposed by the chain’s franchiser and key creditors, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Bankruptcy Judge Brendan Linehan Shannon endorsed the chapter 11 plan — which will include a tripling of the initial equity commitment from the franchisee’s owner, private-equity firm Acon Investments — after a hearing yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. Court papers show creditors voted overwhelmingly for the plan after RMH, which filed for bankruptcy in May, recently settled disputes with Dine Brands Global Inc., which owns the Applebee’s brand, and a secured lender group led by Bank of America Corp.