Edward Scott Lampert (born July 19, 1962) is an American billionaire businessman. He is the former CEO and chairman of Sears Holdings (SHLD), founder of Transform Holdco LLC, and founder, chairman, and CEO of ESL Investments. Until May 2007, he was a director of AutoNation. He was a director of AutoZone from 1999 to 2006. As of October 2021, his net worth was estimated at US$2 billion. Early life and education Lampert was born in 1962 to Dolores Lampert and Floyd M. Lampert. He is Jewish. His mother was a housewife. His father was a senior partner in the law firm of Lampert & Lampert in New York City. He has a younger sister Tracey. Lampert's grandmother was a passive investor and a fan of Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street Week television program. She instilled in him an interest in investing. His mother would later recall that young Eddie would sit with his grandmother reviewing and evaluating the performance of her stock picks in the daily newspaper. Lampert's father died in 1977, and his mother took a job as a clerk at Saks Fifth Avenue. His mother would later say: "Eddie really assumed the responsibility, knowing that life had changed and we had to accomplish something by ourselves now." In order to help support his family, Lampert worked after school and on weekends at various warehouses, stocking shelves and filling orders. Despite working, he earned good grades, played both soccer and basketball, and won the scholar athlete award at his high school. He received financial aid to help pay for college. Lampert graduated from Yale University in 1984 with a bachelor's degree in economics, summa cum laude, where he was a member of Skull and Bones and Phi Beta Kappa. Career In July 1984, Lampert worked as an intern at Goldman Sachs, and then worked in the firm's risk arbitrage department from March 1985 to February 1988. While there, he worked directly with Robert Rubin. When Lampert decided to go out on his own, Rubin warned him it would be a bad career decision. In April 1988, Lampert left the bank to form ESL Investments, based in Greenwich, Connecticut (the name ESL derives from Lampert's initials). Richard Rainwater, whom Lampert had met on Nantucket Island, gave him $28 million in seed money and introduced him to clients, such as David Geffen. Lampert typically holds his investments for several years and usually