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Federated Department Stores

Federated Department Stores, Inc. operates 465 department stores in 34 U.S. states, Guam and Puerto Rico, under the Macy's and Bloomingdale's nameplates. The following list includes information on both stores, such as the number of stores and the states they are located in.

On March 6, 2005, Bon-Macy's, Burdines-Macy's, Goldsmith's-Macy's, Lazarus-Macy's, and Rich's-Macy's stores were all renamed to simply Macy's.

The department store chain Stern's, which was affiliated with Federated, ceased operations in 1998, and most of its stores became Macy's stores.

FDS was founded in 1929 in Columbus, Ohio as a holding company for a number of department stores, including Abraham & Straus of Brooklyn, F&R Lazarus & Company of Columbus, Ohio, and Filene's of Boston.

In 1945 Federated moved its offices to Cincinnati, Ohio.

To support its huge retail operations, Federated has centralized its back-office functions into several large divisions, covering financial services, marketing, merchandising, logistics, and data processing systems.

Other retailers' branded credit cards are usually issued and serviced by a third-party bank; Federated is so huge that it runs its own private bank, FDS Bank, which in turn issues and services the proprietary credit cards offered at Federated stores.

Since the 1990s, FDS has gained a reputation for being well-run, careful, cautious, and conservative. This is understandable in light of the fact that Federated went bankrupt in 1990 after a hostile takeover, and then took over Macy's in 1994 while Macy's was still emerging from its own 1992 bankruptcy. FDS entered e-commerce somewhat late (in 1998), and FDS Bank was one of the last credit card banks to allow its cardholders to access account information online (around 2004).

On February 28, 2005, Federated announced that they will acquire May Department Stores for $11 billion in stock in a deal that would create the nation's second largest department store chain with over 1,000 stores and $30 billion in annual sales. Eventually, Federated will phase out most of May's regional nameplates to the Macy's or Bloomingdale's name by 2006-2007.

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Last updated: 10-11-2005 21:21:48
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