The May Department Stores Company
 |
|
| Industry | Retail |
|---|---|
| Fate | Merged with Federated Department Stores, Inc. |
| Successor | Macy's Inc |
| Founded | 1877 |
| Defunct | 2005 |
| Headquarters |
Leadville, Colorado (1877-1888) Denver, Colorado (1888-1905) St. Louis, Missouri (1905-2005) |
|
Key people
|
David May (founder) Morton May (chairman, 1951-1967) Eugene S. Kahn (CEO, 1998-2005) |
| Products | Clothing, footwear, accessories, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares |
| Subsidiaries |
Famous-Barr Filene's Foley's Hecht's The Jones Store Kaufmann's Lord & Taylor L.S. Ayres Marshall Field's Meier & Frank Robinsons-May Strawbridge's Caldor May Cohens/May Florida O'Neil's (M. O'Neil Co.) May Company Cleveland |
| Website | Maycompany.com |
The May Department Stores Company was an American department store holding company, formerly headquartered in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. It was founded by David May in 1877, and merged with Federated Department Stores (now Macy's, Inc.) in 2005.
This company was only a holding company that bought, sold, and merged regional department stores, such as Foley's and L.S. Ayres. During most of its history, the operations of the various divisions were kept separate and had their own buyers and credit cards, which were not accepted at other May owned stores. There were times in which two different May's own stores had operated in the same geographical market but were aimed at different customers. Most decisions for each of the regional store companies were made by management at the local headquarters and not by the holding company in St. Louis.
Some of the regional stores shared names that were similar to the parent company, such as Los Angeles based May Company California, but all it had in common with parent was that they were headed by a different member of the May family as the president of their respective regional store chain and were separate legal entities.
The company previously developed malls under the name May Centers, Inc. The first shopping center that May Department Stores developed was an opened-air shopping center that first opened in 1947 that later became the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza in Los Angeles.
During the mid-1980s, the company noticed that their company's stock was vastly undervalued and that the company was at risk of becoming a hostile takeover target, May Department Stores needed to re-purchase some of its company's stock to push the share price up. To accomplish this task, they needed to get much cash quickly, which they did by making a deal with Prudential Insurance in which the insurance company gave May $550 million in exchange for 50% ownership of May Centers. In 1992, Prudential purchased the rest of May Centers and renamed the company CenterMark. The following year Prudential sold the company to a consortium that was composed of General Growth Properties, a real estate investment trust in Des Moines; Westfield Holdings Ltd. of Australia; and Whitehall Street Real Estate L.P. III, an investment partnership formed by Goldman, Sachs & Co. In 1996, General Growth sold its share to Westfield, which enabled Westfield to add these properties to its existing collection of properties.
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Wikipedia