Owner of Fortunoff, Lord & Taylor buys Hudson's Bay

A North American retailing powerhouse was born last month

-- Casual Living, 8/1/2008 12:00:00 AM

A North American retailing powerhouse was born last month when NRDC, the equity firm owners of Fortunoff and Lord & Taylor acquired Hudson's Bay Company, Canada's oldest retailer.

In completing the acquisition, NRDC Equity Partners created holding company Hudson's Bay Trading. The combined company will have annual sales of about $8 billion, 75,000 employees and about 650 stores with 55 million square feet of retail spaces across all 10 Canadian provinces and nine U.S. states, mainly in the Northeast.

Terms were not disclosed. The sale comes two and a half years after the 338-year-old Hudson's Bay was bought for slightly more than $1.1 billion by Jerry Zucker, a Charleston, S.C. investor. Rumors about a sale had circulated since Zucker's death in April.

Richard Baker, CEO of NRDC and HBTC, became the 38th governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, succeeding Anita Zucker.

Retail veteran Jeffrey Sherman was named CEO of the Hudson's Bay Company. Sherman recently retired as president of the Polo Retail Group, the merchandising arm of Polo Ralph Lauren. Earlier he was an executive at Limited Brands, Federated Department Stores and Bloomingdale's before becoming chairman and CEO of Federated Direct.