Willis Tower to entice the firm to stay. Two years later, Sears began moving its own offices out of the Sears Tower. In 1994, Sears sold the building to Boston-based AEW Capital Management, with financing from MetLife. At the time, it was one-third vacant. By 1995, Sears had completely left the building, moving to a new office campus in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. In 1997, Toronto-based TrizecHahn Corporation (the owner of the CN Tower at the time) purchased the building for $110 million, and assumption of $4 million in liabilities, and a $734 million mortgage. In 2003, Trizec surrendered the building to lender
Willis Tower the law firms of Schiff Hardin and Seyfarth Shaw. Morgan Stanley plans to move to the building in 2019, and to become the building's fourth-largest tenant by 2020. In 1969, Sears, Roebuck & Co. was the largest retailer in the world, with about 350,000 employees. Sears executives decided to consolidate the thousands of employees in offices distributed throughout the Chicago area into one building on the western edge of Chicago's Loop. Sears asked its outside counsel, Arnstein, Gluck, Weitzenfeld & Minow (now known as Arnstein & Lehr, LLP) to suggest a location. The firm consulted with local and federal authorities