We’re no longer in the golden age of the department store, but one notable family is hoping to breathe new life into its empire.
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The Nordstrom clan has proposed a bid to take their eponymous retailer private to the tune of $3.8 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Currently, the family owns about a third of the public company’s shares; its proposal would buy out the remaining shares for $23 each in cash, slightly more than the recent trading price.
To carry out the deal, the Nordstroms are joining forces with Mexican company El Puerto de Liverpool, which bought a 10 percent stake in Nordstrom in 2022. If the proposal were to be accepted, the Nordstrom family would own 50.1 percent of the department-store business, while Liverpool would own the remaining 49.9 percent. A special committee of the Nordstrom board is set to review the offer.
Like many department stores, Nordstrom has been struggling over the past few years. Shoppers are largely turning to online retailers for their purchases, and large department stores are facing fewer customers and weaker sales. By going private, Nordstrom would be able to make business decisions without facing blowback from investors and the public at large, Neil Saunders, managing director of research company GlobalData, told The Wall Street Journal . Private companies, for example, don’t have to share their quarterly financial reports.
“The common theme is that department stores are facing myriad issues and executives are looking for alternative ways of running the businesses,” Saunders said.
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Back in 2019, the Nordstrom family undertook a similar effort to make the company private. While they then offered $50 a share, the proposal ultimately failed. Likewise, an investor group tried to do the same at Macy’s earlier this year, with the same unsuccessful result, the newspaper wrote. (That struggling business also announced that it would close a whopping 150 stores by 2026.)
Elsewhere, high-end department stores such as Lord & Taylor , Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman have filed for bankruptcy in recent years. Neiman Marcus is now merging with Saks Fifth Avenue, which itself went private back in 2020.
If Nordstrom’s board were to approve the namesake family’s proposal, that department store could be the next to move out of the public eye.
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