CURRAN ANNOUNCES AGREEMENT RESOLVING ANTITRUST CONCERNS IN FEDERATED-MAY MERGER

Agreement Ensures Four Malls Get New Department Stores

Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr. today announced an agreement to resolve antitrust concerns raised by the merger of the two largest department store companies in the United States. The agreement requires Federated Department Stores of Cincinnati, Ohio, operator of major department stores, including Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, and the May Company of St. Louis, Missouri, which operates stores in Maryland under the Hecht’s and Lord & Taylor names, to sell to competing department stores the four stores the merged companies plan to close in Maryland.

Curran said the companies had announced that after the merger, Federated would divest one of its stores in each of the four malls in Maryland having both a Hecht’s and a Macy’s: White Marsh, Owings Mills, Marley Station and Wheaton. Under the agreement, Federated and May will sell the stores to another department store or to a mall developer with plans to use the store for a department store even if it gets a higher bid for the stores for some other use. The department stores to which the properties can be sold include the BonTon, Boscov’s, Dillard’s, Elder Beerman, Gottschalks, Nordstrom, Neiman-Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Department Store Group, Belks, Proffits, MacRaes, and Von Maur. The sales are subject to a minimum bid which will be set by an independent appraiser selected by Federated, but approved by General Curran and the Attorneys General of California, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania, who also joined in the agreement.

“ With this agreement we ensure that Maryland consumers will continue to have a choice of traditional department stores when they shop,” Curran said. ”Competition leads to higher quality and lower prices.”

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