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.
It isn’t the only company to die this way. Sears was cellar boxed the same as toys r us. It was what was intended for gamestop but the whole wallstreetbets thing happened and prevented it.
I live in a place that suddenly became a fucking healthcare desert because of this shit. The local hospital network was bought by vulture capitalists who sold the real estate to themselves and then leased it back to the hospitals, racked up enormous debt almost entirely due to obscene bonuses they paid themselves, then declared bankruptcy. The hospitals are all closed now but the vulture capitalists have their cash and still own the real estate. I recently had to spend two days in the ER of a far-away hospital that has been swamped with the overflow, with my mom in a bed in the hallway for the entire fucking time. Muigi Langione is the thing to do.