That's exactly what happened. When Lampert bought Sears there was (now hilariously wrong) talk of Sears becoming his Berkshire Hathaway and Lampert becoming the

That's exactly what happened. When Lampert bought Sears there was (now hilariously wrong) talk of Sears becoming his Berkshire Hathaway and Lampert becoming the next Warren Buffet. I think it became obvious very quickly that that was never going to happen. Berkshire Hathaway, afaik, had solid underlying fundamentals. If only the business could be run more efficiently could it then become a cash cow that could be leveraged into bigger things. Sears did not have great fundamentals when Lampert bought in. If anything it was a financial engineering play that didn't work out. Also, iirc, everyone thought that the real estate alone could bail out the investment if everything else went to hell. I think that is still yet to be seen.