Cincinnati-based retail giant Macy’s Inc., under pressure from investors to unlock value in its real estate, is hiring a specialist to help the company negotiate with developers.
Macy’s is exploring joint ventures with other companies to manage its flagship and mall-based stores, and Chief Financial Officer Karen Hoguet said previously that the company was seeing “a high degree of interest” among parties in those joint ventures.
Rather than Hoguet and CEO Terry Lundgren negotiate with developers, the company is looking to someone else.
“We’re hiring a specialist to help us do that,” Lundgren said at the 2016 Consumer and Retail Tech Conference in New York on March 15. “The line of people at our door who are attracted to that job has been very impressive.”
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Macy’s isn’t yet ready to announce a hire, but it will in the near future, Lundgren said. He said it would add a new level of sophistication to the way Macy’s thinks about asset value.
” We will always be a retailer first,” Lundgren said. “This will be another set of expertise that will add value to us as a retailer.”
Activist investor Starboard Value has been pressing Macy’s to do something with its real estate, which it believes is valued at $21 billion. Macy’s has declined to go with Starboard’s original suggestion of spinning off the real estate holdings into a different company.
Macy’s has already sold part of its flagship location in Brooklyn for $270 million. It is also closing 36 locations by spring of this year, joining four that were shuttered in 2015.
Macy’s operates 885 stores in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Dubai, Guam and Puerto Rico under the Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Boomingdale’s Outlet and Bluemercury brands.
Date: March 18, 2016