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Sears Holdings Corp. and its chief executive, Eddie Lampert, are being sued for allegedly encouraging participants in its 401(k) plan to buy company stock despite well-publicized struggles that have battered Sears shares since 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The lawsuit, filed on Friday in Illinois federal court, requested class-action status on behalf of participants in the Sears Holdings Savings Plan, which suffered “tens of millions of dollars of losses” on Sears stockholdings in the past three years. Those losses would have been “minimized or avoided” if plan administrators had stopped offering Sears shares as an investment option sooner, according to the complaint. The 401(k) plan froze purchases of Sears shares at the end of 2016, “too little, too late, to protect a great deal of [the] participants’ retirement savings,” the complaint said. Sears stock lost 80 percent of its value in the three years before the lawsuit.

The U.S. bankruptcy court in Indianapolis has approved an employee incentive program that would pay key executives of HHGregg Inc. a total of $675,000 if certain goals are hit as the company winds down, the Indianapolis Business Journal reported today. The court’s approval of the incentive program, reported in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday, is part of the Indianapolis-based electronics and appliance retailer’s chapter 11 bankruptcy. HHGregg failed to find a buyer and closed all 220 of its stores in the spring. Executives eligible for the bonus include Kevin J. Kovacs, the company’s chief financial officer who now also is serving as CEO through the bankruptcy. Former CEO Bob Riesbeck left in early June.

Spurning brides-to-be across the country, a wedding dress retailer got its own case of cold feet Friday, filing for bankruptcy and closing all its stores, USA Today reported. Alfred Angelo Bridal, a national chain with 60 of its own stores and 1,400 locations worldwide that sell its products, filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation in Florida, where it is based. Alfred Angelo plans to liquidate its assets, said Patricia Redmond, a lawyer for the Florida firm Stearns Weaver Miller that handled the bankruptcy filing. Store managers were not alerted to the closure, according to the Wall Street Journal, and many stores were locked up for the last time on Thursday with no advance warning to customers or employees. Some Alfred Angelo customers who hadn't received their orders took to Twitter on Friday to voice their frustration. With weddings approaching and little time to find another dress, many brides were also unsure whether they would receive a refund on a dress they’d paid for but had not yet received. Redmond said that she had received "thousands" of e-mails from concerned women, but that the company would work to fulfill all orders that had already been purchased from Alfred Angelo.

Sears Canada Inc. yesterday was granted court approval to proceed with a sale process that would allow the retailer to consider a range of potential deals, Reuters reported. A report by the court-appointed monitor FTI Consulting posted on its website on Wednesday said that more than 20 parties have signed non-disclosure agreements with Sears Canada as part of the planned sale process. Earlier this week, Edward Lampert's ESL Partners LP and Fairholme, which own about two-thirds of Sears Canada, said that they were considering a potential deal with the retailer and had engaged a legal adviser. The sale process, which will be conducted by BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc, would consider bids and proposals for deals involving its business, assets and leases, either in whole or in part. Sears Canada, which in 2012 was spun off from U.S. retailer Sears Holdings Corp, filed for creditor protection in June and laid out a restructuring plan that included cutting 2,900 jobs and closing roughly a quarter of its stores.

Guitar Center Inc., the largest U.S. retailer of music instruments and equipment, is looking for ways to restructure its $1.3 billion debt burden as music lovers move their shopping online, Reuters reported. Guitar Center, majority-owned by private equity firm Ares Management LP, has been having conversations with investment banks and law firms about hiring advisers to help address its capital structure, with $615 million in secured debt coming due in 2019. The musical instrument industry grew 9 percent to $7.1 billion in retail sales over the past five years, but remains well below its 2005 peak of $7.7 billion, according to data from The Music Trades magazine.

Children's clothing seller Gymboree Corp. is closing 350 stores as it works to restructure in bankruptcy, the Associated Press reported. The San Francisco-based company said yesterday that it's mostly closing Gymboree and Crazy 8 stores. It also operates Janie and Jack stores. The company will have more than 900 locations after the stores are shut down. Gymboree filed for bankruptcy protection in June. The closing sales at affected stores are scheduled to begin next Tuesday.

The two largest shareholders of Sears Canada Inc. said yesterday that they have teamed to explore potential deals in connection with the struggling retailer as it winds through bankruptcy proceedings in Canada, the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> reported. ESL Partners LP, operated by hedge-fund manager Edward Lampert who has pumped billions into trying to revive Sears Canada and its U.S. namesake, and its affiliates have joined Bruce Berkowitz’s Fairholme Capital Management LLC, another heavy gambler on Sears, in seeking joint legal counsel to represent them in the retailer’s bankruptcy proceedings. At the same time, Lampert and Fairholme “are evaluating, discussing and considering a potential negotiated transaction” with Sears Canada, which was spun off from Sears Holdings Corp. in 2012. ESL Partners and Fairholme said that there is no guarantee that any transaction, together or separately, will result from discussions.

True Value Co. is considering a sale that could value the home-improvement store chain at about $800 million, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The company is working with an investment bank to examine strategic options, including a sale. The process is expected to attract private equity firms, but no final decision has been made. The company reported revenue of $1.51 billion in 2016, up 1.1 percent from the previous year, and it’s exploring alternatives at a time when other retailers are filing for bankruptcy at a record rate. True Value, led by Chief Executive Officer John Hartmann, is a cooperative of more than 4,000 stores across more than 58 countries, according to its website. Members of the cooperative, which can trace its origins back to 1948, also operate under the names Party Central, Taylor Rental, and Grand Rental Station.