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.
Not sure this applies here as it was a private buyout meaning that there would be no stock to short.
They could have shorted it before the buyout to get a better deal, but the banks didn’t buy it the just lent the money.
Also shorting before could be seen as insider trading, right? Not that something being illegal means it wouldn’t happen, but feels like that would be hard to hide.