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.
I’ve considered it, but I do think it was a huge blunder that was planned differently. They invested a bunch of money in Windows Mobile, had a partnership with Nokia and then bought their mobile business… And then they just gave up, handling their competitors in other markets (Apple being a competitor to Windows and Google at the time being already a competitor to Office) a win. I suspect they actually had faith in Windows Mobile and wanted to fuck up Nokia and buy their phone business so they could sell Windows Phones.