Sears to close 62 stores in business cost reduction initiative

In a major cost reduction initiative, retailer Sears Holdings Corp. said this week it would close a number of stores.

The retail chain store was once a dominant player in the sector, but competition from Wal-Mart and Target and mistakes in its business strategy have hurt Sears over the past decade. Bloomberg reports Sears will close 62 of its stores in an effort to bolster profitability and satisfy anxious shareholders.

Sears, controlled by hedge fund executive Edward Lampert, will close 43 Sears Hometown stores, 10 Sears Hardware stores and 9 The Great Indoors stores, according to company executives. The company did not detail what stores, exactly, would shut down, and it did not release a timeline specifying its plans, according to the news provider.

The company announced earlier in the year it would move forward with an ambitious business cost reduction campaign as it worked to recover from its largest quarterly loss in nearly a decade. Sears, which also owns Kmart, is hoping to raise hundreds of millions of dollars through real estate sales, with Lampert eyeing an eventual payoff of more than $750 million.