[6] Lampert's grandmother was a passive investor and a fan of Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street Week television program.
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.
Despite working, he earned good grades, played both soccer and basketball, and won the scholar athlete award at his high school.
[8] 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[2][9] and Phi Beta Kappa.
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.
[11] In 2006, Lampert was featured on the Time 100 list for most influential people in the world for being one of the "brightest minds on Wall Street" and leading a new class of activist hedge funds.
[1] In January 2013, it was announced that Lampert would take over as chief executive officer at Sears after Louis D'Ambrosio stepped down due to family health matters; this took effect in May 2013.
[18] In early 2017, Lampert, then president, chief executive officer and top shareholder of Sears Holdings, was estimated to have personal assets of $2 billion, primarily in the hedge fund ESL Investments.
On December 6, 2018, Lampert, through his company ESL Investments, offered to buy all of Sears for $4.6 billion in cash and stock.
[31] In 2003, Lampert was kidnapped from the parking lot of his Greenwich office but persuaded his captors to let him go after two days of captivity by promising to pay them a ransom.
[2] Lampert is a self-proclaimed supporter of free market economics and is a fan of Objectivism writer Ayn Rand.