epartners

Eddie Lampert serves as chairman and controls all material investment decisions at epartners. Previously, Lampert ran ESL Investments, the hedge fund he founded in 1988, which later served as the primary creditor and equity sponsor during the 2018 Sears Holdings bankruptcy restructuring. epartners has not publicly disclosed any additional investment committee members or senior investment professionals.

epartners functions as a single-family office managing the Lampert family capital. While it holds assets that would typically sit inside an institutional fund—commercial real estate, insurance receivables, and private debt—the firm does not market itself to external limited partners. Some of its holdings are registered via continuation vehicles like MIP III LLC, but those vehicles serve to hold and restructure existing assets rather than raise fresh external capital.

The bulk of epartners' holdings originated from the 2018 Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Sears Holdings. Eddie Lampert, via ESL Investments, was both the largest shareholder and a major creditor of Sears when it filed. Through a $5.2 billion bid under Section 363 of the bankruptcy code, ESL acquired substantially all of Sears' remaining assets, including roughly 400 store locations, the Kenmore and DieHard brands, and the Sears home services business. Those assets were subsequently transferred into epartners as the Lampert family's permanent capital vehicle.

epartners is not known to make fund commitments to external GPs. Its investment activity is overwhelmingly direct, centered on managing, leasing, selling, or redeveloping the real estate and operating assets inherited through the Sears bankruptcy. The firm has registered private-placement securities tied to those direct holdings rather than acting as a limited partner in third-party funds.

The wealth traces to Eddie Lampert's career as a hedge-fund manager and retail executive. Lampert founded ESL Investments in 1988 at age 25, building a track record as a concentrated value investor often compared to Warren Buffett. ESL's 2005 merger of Kmart and Sears created the third-largest American retailer at the time, but the combined company's subsequent collapse generated the assets that now sit inside epartners.

epartners does not target venture or growth-stage companies. The firm's mandate centers on asset management and monetization of an existing legacy portfolio—commercial real estate redevelopment, brand licensing, insurance run-off, and select private credit opportunities secured by its real estate holdings. This is best understood as a balance-sheet family office rather than one making new direct investments from fresh liquidity.

ESL Investments is the hedge fund Eddie Lampert founded in 1988, which served as the primary vehicle for his public and private market investing for three decades. epartners was established after the Sears bankruptcy to hold the assets ESL acquired through that process. ESL formally wound down its hedge-fund operations in the years following the bankruptcy, leaving epartners as the primary ongoing investment entity for the Lampert family office.