Yes, it's a common happening for financial weasels to run a brick and mortar chain into the ground.
Dick Smith, Maplin, Radio Shack - get control of the company, absolutely max out borrowing, blow cash on suspicious things, company can no longer service the massive debt, declare bankruptcy. Profit for all in the know.
Publicly-traded retailers have hedge funds playing similar games to profit from taking them down. Manipulate their stock with bad press releases etc.
It's a tragedy because these companies took many years to build up.
Here we have a very high commercial real estate vacancy rate, so the commercial real estate megacorps need to keep up their cashflow and satisfy investors, so... using their greed algo they are doubling rent.
It's 'stupid inflation' but small businesses are weakened after the pandemic and are just closing down instead of moving or trying to find a new lease reasonably priced.
I can see a wasteland of commercial vacancies right now, every complex has listings - and nobody is sounding the alarm bell or lowering rent.