Sears Chairman Eddie Lampert thinks the embattled retailer could one day be a public company. : Sears Chairman Eddie Lampert has a new vision for the department store chain, once a publicly traded retailer until it was forced to file for bankruptcy last year. "If I am a betting person, which I am, I would say at some point we would be public again," Lampert told The Wall Street Journal. It was his first interview since the deal to use his ESL Investments hedge fund to buy Sears out of bankruptcy was approved this month.