REUTERS/Peter Morgan PM
Sears chairman Eddie Lampert.
- Eddie Lampert, the chairman and former CEO of Sears, has an estimated net worth of $1 billion.
- Lampert owns three homes, including one on the wealthy "Billionaire Bunker" island in Florida, and also owns a $130 million yacht.
- Lampert is a member of the ultra-exclusive Skull and Bones society at Yale University.
- In 2003, he was kidnapped and held at gunpoint - only to negotiate his way free.
Eddie Lampert, the chairman and former CEO of Sears, has had an eventful career.
With an estimated net worth of $1 billion, Lampert was once hailed as a genius hedge-fund manager and the next Warren Buffett. He's a member of Yale's ultra-exclusive Skull and Bones secret society, along with three former presidents, and his college roommate was eventual US Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin.
He also managed to save Kmart from bankruptcy in the early 2000s, but not before he was kidnapped and held at gunpoint for 30 hours in a Connecticut hotel. He reportedly talked his captors into releasing him, then capped off the Kmart deal a week later.
Now, after Lampert merged Kmart with Sears, the department store is now on the brink of liquidation.
Lampert has garnered criticism for his management of Sears, which he reportedly runs from his sprawling, $38 million estate in a wealthy Florida community known as "billionaire bunker." The wealthy executive also owns houses in Connecticut and Colorado, not to mention a $130 million yacht.
Read on to see how Sears' embattled chairman made - and spends - his $1 billion fortune.