Basically, the company had to pay for its own buyout when private equity firms KKL, Vornado, and Bain bought the company for $6.6 billion, mostly with loans.
Because the company then had to pay off those extreme loans, they were forced to sell off their assets and property, which they leased back from the very private equity firms that now owned them.
The same thing happened more recently with Red Lobster and JoAnn Fabrics.
Pretty much nothing in “the economy” works like it does in theory. It’s always way more complex so the people with the most power and money can squeeze more exploitation out of it. I really like how this guy explains it
https://www.facebook.com/reel/976701137942045
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1LcJjd6Wosw
He’s got a whole series on Private Equity
Sometimes teenagers ask me about how the stock market works.
I love explaining shorts, because the reaction is always “how does that even make sense?”
The short answer (ba dum, tisssss) is that some forms of mutual funds buy a little bit of every stock rather than picking and choosing. Then, for reasons never really made clear, they let other investors borrow those stocks as long as they return them later.
I think that’s the natural outcome. that’s the emergent behaviour of capitalism.
those with more money have more power and more influence to make the system better for those with money and power.
the rest, like almost all “economics” its just BS to hide that simple fact.