Finance & Capital Management

Hoffman Estates, Ill. – As part of a wide-ranging strategic review of its business, Sears Holdings Corp. is considering spinning off its Lands’ End and Sears Auto Center brands. The company’s Sears Canada subsidiary has also sold five Canadian store leases to Cadillac Fairview Corporation Limited for about $383.4 million.

New York – Larry Kirshbaum, a publishing industry executive who joined Amazon.com’s New York-based publishing unit in 2011, is reportedly leaving the company to become a literary agent. According to the Associated Press, Kirshbaum, who formerly was in charge of the Time Warner Book Group will officially leave his position in January 2014.

Bedford, Mass. – Daily mobile/online retail revenues surge an average of 55% on Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving), but a corresponding surge in attacks drives hard losses, on average, as much as $500,000 per hour or $8,000 per minute. In addition, a new study of 1,100 U.S., and U.K., retail IT staffers from RSA and the Ponemon Institute shows that 66% of respondents expect that disruption would result in customer churn that would damage reputation and brand and could push losses as high as $3.4 million from a single hour of disruption.

New York -- J.C. Penney Co. on Monday reassured investors that sales trends are improving and reaffirmed its forecast calling for positive same-store sales results in the third quarter, Reuters reported.

The comments were made by Myron Ullman, Penney’s CEO, at the Women's Wear Daily conference on Monday.

New York -- Chinos Intermediate Holdings A, Inc., the indirect parent company of J. Crew Group, Inc., intends to issue $500 million of senior PIK toggle notes due 2019. The notes will be offered and will be sold in a private placement to qualified institutional buyers in the U.S, pursuant to Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and to non-U.S. persons in transactions outside the U.S. pursuant to Regulation S under the Securities Act.   

Pittsburgh – Dick’s Sporting Goods opens five new stores across the U.S. on Nov. 8. The stores will be located in Dover, Del., Palm Desert, Calif., West Des Moines, Iowa, Sioux Falls, S.D., and Findlay, Ohio.

Dick’s will operate a total of 554 stores in the U.S. upon opening the five new stores. The Sioux Falls store will be the chain’s first store in South Dakota. This total will include three in Delaware, 32 in California, five in Iowa, and 38 in Ohio.

San Diego — Petco has opened its first store in Mexico and announced plans for continued expansion in Mexico and Latin America through a joint venture with Grupo Gigante of Mexico.

The companies plan to open as many as 50 Petco stores in Mexico and Latin America by 2020.