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In the weeks before Gustavo Arnal took his own life, there was growing concern among Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. officials and directors over the demands being placed on the chief financial officer and the stress of the intensifying financial crisis at the home-goods chain, the Wall Street Journal reported. Sue Gove, a board member who had taken over as interim chief executive officer in June, and some other board members thought Mr. Arnal was overwhelmed but didn’t want to replace the finance chief while the embattled retailer was in the midst of raising money. Mr. Arnal told people that he was stressed, his friends said. He was putting in 18-hour days while he worked on the company’s restructuring plans. He was also inundated with emails from individual investors and plaintiffs’ lawyers questioning an August sale of some of his holdings in Bed Bath & Beyond, the people said. Mr. Arnal was discussing with the company the possibility of taking a break, the people said. Company officials had calls about the topic before the Labor Day weekend and planned to pick up the discussions after the holiday, some of the people said. On the morning of Aug. 31, Ms. Gove, Mr. Arnal and other executives announced that they had secured fresh financing and briefed investors on a major restructuring. Two days later, Mr. Arnal died from a fall at the 57-story New York City skyscraper where he lived with his wife, police said. The medical examiner determined it was a suicide. Bed Bath & Beyond has about 800 stores around the U.S. The chain boasted 27 straight years of growth until 2019, when it started to lose customers to online shopping. That year, its founders and leaders were ousted by activist investors. The company has since been reeling from a failed turnaround strategy that left it with too much inventory, evaporating profits and a shrinking cash pile. The architect of the strategy, former CEO Mark Tritton, left in June, followed by other senior executives he had recruited to the company. Gone are the chief operating officer, chief merchant and chief accounting officer.

Bed Bath & Beyond unveiled its turnaround strategy this week, but it likely won't be enough to save the company, according to a restructuring expert, YahooFinance.com reported. “Unfortunately, it's just a little bit too little too late,” Macco CEO Drew McManigle said. “They should have started this process last year if they'd been paying attention to the post-pandemic numbers.” Bed Bath & Beyond’s aggressive turnaround strategy includes plans to raise cash, close approximately 150 stores, and cut 20% of its corporate and supply chain staff as it streamlines its organizational structure and eliminates the COO and Chief Stores Officer roles. The retailer also secured $500 million in additional financing, including a $375 million loan from Sixth Street Partners, bringing its total liquidity to about $1 billion. Bed Bath & Beyond stock was down 28% as of the market close on Friday since the plan was revealed on Wednesday. McManigle warned that these steps may not be enough, and a chapter 11 bankruptcy is a "fait accompli" at this point. “I'm also not convinced that this $500 million in financing is going to be enough cash," McManigle said. "And I'm not convinced that it's going to make any difference in the long term whether they file a chapter 11 proceeding or not because quite frankly that's the only way they're going to be able to successfully restructure $1.3 billion in debt and get out from underneath a lot of real estate.” As of its fiscal first quarter, Bed Bath & Beyond had 955 stores, including 135 buybuy BABY stores and 51 Harmon or Face Value locations. Real estate is a focal point in the retailer's turnaround plan, and Bed Bath & Beyond noted it will continue to “evaluate its portfolio and leases, in addition to staffing, to ensure alignment with customer demand and go-forward strategy.”

The bankrupt estate of Sears Holding Corp. won court approval to settle complex litigation against former CEO Eddie Lampert and other investors for $175 million, helping bring the retail chain’s four-year-old Chapter 11 case to a close, Bloomberg Law reported. Resolution of the litigation, which focused on $2 billion worth of pre-bankruptcy transactions engineered by Lampert and his hedge fund ESL Investments Inc., dispels lingering uncertainty about the estate’s ability to pay creditors pursuant to a chapter 11 plan approved nearly three years ago. Judge Robert Drain of the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York said he would approve the deal during a virtual court hearing yesterday, marking what should be the retiring jurist‘s final appearance in the case. The settlement, which was negotiated over the course of several months with the help of three mediators, allows the estate to avoid what would likely be two more years of litigating “complex, and therefore expensive” legal claims, Drain said. Although the amount of claims asserted “were substantially higher than the settlement amount,” those figures are discounted “by probability of success,” he said. He noted that the deal allows the company to pay all administrative and priority claims required under the plan.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. said that it would close roughly 150 of its flagship stores, cut its workforce and bring in fresh cash to help turn around the struggling retail chain, the Wall Street Journal reported. It also made preparations to sell additional shares, a move that would dilute current shareholders and that sent its stock price tumbling. Shares were down 21% at midday Wednesday. The announcements, including laying off about 20% of its corporate and supply-chain staff, were part of a strategic update just days after the end of the company’s latest quarter. The retail chain reported that comparable sales tumbled 26% in the quarter ended Aug. 27 and its operations burned through about $325 million of its cash reserves. Bed Bath & Beyond said it had secured more than $500 million in new financing, which includes the expansion of an existing credit line. The new lifeline for the company is being led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Sixth Street Partners. The retailer said that its board had determined not to sell its buybuy Baby chain, which operated 135 stores as of May. The company had hired advisers to explore a potential sale of buybuy Baby. Overall, Bed Bath & Beyond had about 955 total stores as of May 28.

NewAge Inc., a direct-to-consumer seller of health and wellness products, filed for bankruptcy yesterday and said that it plans to sell itself, after disclosing material weaknesses in its financial reporting, Reuters reported. The Midvale, Utah-based company and three affiliates sought chapter 11 protection from creditors with the U.S. bankruptcy court in Delaware. Yesterday's filing came three weeks after the company received a default notice on a loan agreement. NewAge said it had $310.9 million of assets and $149.4 million of debts as of the end of 2021. In a regulatory filing, NewAge said it received a $28 million bid from an entity known as DIP Financing LLC to buy substantially all its assets, subject to court approval and higher bids. NewAge also said it lined up $16 million in financing to help it operate while it restructures. The company has not filed annual or quarterly reports this year, after finding a material weakness in its 2020 annual report related to how it reported acquisitions.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. shares plunged in premarket trading Wednesday after the home-goods retailer announced in a filing that it may offer, issue and sell shares of its common stock from time to time, Bloomberg News reported. Shares in the retail-trader favorite sank as much as 21% as of 6:42 a.m. New York time, erasing an earlier gain of as much as 6.5%. The company said it plans to use proceeds from any sales of its common stock to, among other things, pay down its outstanding debts. The announcement comes as investors geared up for a strategic update from the home-goods retailer, due before the opening bell. While the focus of Bed Bath & Beyond’s “business and strategic update” is unknown, it will be watched closely following last week’s report that the company was said to be looking to mortgage its prized Buybuy Baby brand. Morgan Stanley analysts have previously said that cash burn and vendor support will also be in focus at the conference call, which is scheduled for today.

When pay-later services like Klarna, which was founded in Sweden, arrived in the U.S. about a decade ago, they were largely used for one-time, discretionary purchases like concert tickets and high-end clothing. But as inflation mounts, Americans are increasingly turning to them to finance something much more mundane and essential: what they eat, the New York Times reported. And there are signs that the use of these services for repeated, everyday expenses like groceries and restaurant meals is pushing some users, particularly younger people who are already overextended, deeper into debt. Pay-later companies say their products are a convenient tool — like layaway plans or credit cards — to help consumers manage their finances in tough times. The services, with breezy names like Zip, Zilch and Affirm, are easy to use, with well-designed apps, websites, virtual credit cards and widgets. Shoppers can apply for them in a checkout line and be approved in minutes. Unlike credit cards, most of the services don’t charge interest or require applicants to undergo extensive credit checks. There is usually a processing fee for each purchase, typically paid by the merchant. Pay-later companies are already commonplace in countries like South Korea and Australia. Buoyed by inflation and the rise in e-commerce, they have quickly gained a foothold in the United States, where $45.9 billion in pay-later transactions were made online in 2021, up from $15.3 billion the year before, according to GlobalData, a data analytics company. Food, which accounted for about 6 percent of those purchases, appears to be an important part of the growth. In the last year, Zip, a company based in Sydney, Australia, says it has seen 95 percent growth in U.S. grocery purchases, and 64 percent in restaurant transactions. Klarna reports that more than half of the top 100 items its app users are currently buying from national retailers are grocery or household items. Zilch, says groceries and dining out account for 38 percent of its transactions.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. is looking to mortgage its prized Buybuy Baby brand in its urgent effort to raise financing as sales slump, cash runs low and unpaid vendors withhold shipments, Bloomberg News reported. Company management is in exclusive talks with Sixth Street Partners for a new line of credit of around $375 million, which would be backed by assets including the baby brand, according to people with knowledge of the discussions who asked not to be named because they are private. The loan isn’t final and could change. An exact valuation for Buybuy Baby is hard to pinpoint, especially as its owner’s fortunes fade, but some analyst estimates have put it at $1 billion or more. In a letter in March, the company’s top investor Ryan Cohen projected the brand was worth more than the company’s entire market capitalization, which stands at around $760 million, and said it could even fetch “several billion dollars.” The retailer on a conference call earlier this year to discuss first-quarter results said the Buybuy Baby brand had seen net sales increase by over 20% over the prior year, and projected more than $1.5 billion in sales for the chain by 2023.

Inflation-weary U.S. shoppers have been skimping on clothing purchases, prompting retailers to slash prices to clear inventory off the racks, YahooFinance.com reported. Gap was the latest retailer to report a slump in apparel shopping for the second-quarter, saying on Thursday that net sales slumped 8% from a year earlier to $3.86 billion. Earlier this month, executives at U.S. giants Walmart and Target offered deep discounts and rollbacks on clothing. Gap is “taking actions to sequentially reduce inventory, rebalance our assortments to better meet changing consumer needs," Katrina O’Connell, Gap Inc. chief financial officer, said in a statement. Deep discounts on apparel, especially at Old Navy, hurt the company's margins. Old Navy stores were not able to sell certain sizes and styles, while Gap struggled with mix imbalances. Shoppers may see more promotions as the company keeps clearing inventory. Sales at U.S. apparel and accessory retailers have largely flatlined. Over the 12-months through July they averaged month-over-month growth of just 0.2%, according to Census Bureau data.