第十章第三节脚本

Unit 11 Making Investment Rationally 理性投资

11.3 Part C Edward Lampert---One of the Extraordinary Investors of Our Age Now, let’s move on to Part C. In this part, we are going to listen to a report about an extraordinary investors of our age.

For the past decade, we heard a lot of news about companies’mergers and acquisitions, which have been a very important part of company strategies to deal with business challenges. But on average there are only one third of them that turn out to be successes. Turn a troubled company into a profitable and promising one is not an easy task.

Today we are going to listen to a M&A case and we are supposed to find out whether this one is a successful one or not. If it is successful, why? What has the investor done to make it profitable again? Of course, we also need to find out who invested in which company.

Now let’s listen.

Ok, which company bought which company?

Yes, it’s ESL bought Kmart.

Who is in charge of ESL?

Yes, Edward Lampert.

How was Kmart when it was bought by Edward Lampert?

It was going bankrupt.

Did Edward Lampert turn Kmart into a profitable one?

Yes. Very profitable indeed.

But what did Lampert do specifically to turn Kmart into a profitable one?

Pleas have a look at exercise two. You are supposed to find out more information about Lampert’s successful investment events and his management chops at Kmart. Let’s listen for the second time for these details.

Ok. How much have you got?

As for Lampert’s successful investment events,

ESL holds 14.6% of Sears, whose stock soared 24%.

ESL also owns a big chunk of the No. 1 auto-parts retailer, AutoZone, and the biggest national chain of car dealers, AutoNation, as well as a small stake in the telecom giant MCI.

And also ESL got control of Kmart of a 23 billion dollars retail chain, the nation’s third-largest discounter, behind Walmart and Target, for less than 10 billion dollars in

bankruptcy court.

As for Lampert’s management chops at Kmart, Lampert has been milking Kmart for cash, or providing cash to Kmart.

Lampert has imposed a program of keeping the lid on or controlling capital spending, holding inventory down, and stopping the endless clearance sales.

Lampert has pushed for Kmart to sell 58 stores to Home Depot and Sears to raise a total 846.9 million dollars.

Good, we’ve been listening to some business news and reports about investment in unit 11. Hopefully that’ll improve our comprehension in investment-related listening. That’s all. Thanks.