Nordstrom Family Leads Bid to Take Company Private

The Nordstrom family has teamed up with Mexican department store chain El Puerto de Liverpool on a $3.8-billion bid to take the Nordstrom department store chain private, according to published reports. The board of Nordstrom, Inc. confirmed receipt of the proposal Wednesday and said a special committee would consider it.

At $23 per share, the take-private bid represents a slight premium to Tuesday’s closing price for Nordstrom stock. The Seattle-based retailer’s board said the merger consideration would be financed through a combination of rollover equity and cash commitments by members of the Nordstrom family and Liverpool, and $250 million in new bank financing. The company’s existing indebtedness would remain outstanding.

The bid led by Erik and Pete Nordstrom — great-grandsons of company founder John Nordstrom who serve as CEO and president, respectively, of Nordstrom Inc. — comes at a time when department store executives and investors have attempted to cut deals to address the sector’s longstanding woes, Bloomberg News reported. Activist investors failed in an attempt to take Macy’s Inc. private earlier this year, while HBC said in July it had agreed to acquire Neiman Marcus Group for $2.65 billion, with Amazon and Salesforce as co-investors.

A 2018 privatization bid for Nordstrom at $50 per share was ultimately rejected, Bloomberg reported. Although the company’s latest outlook for fiscal 2024 calls for same-store sales to post year-over-year growth of no more than 1.9%, the Nordstrom Rack discount banner has been a bright spot. Nordstrom plans to open 21 new Nordstrom Rack stores by late 2025; the Nordstrom Rack store count currently is three times as high as that of the full-priced department stores.

For the current take-private bid, Morgan Stanley and Centerview Partners are acting as financial advisors to the special committee, and Sidley Austin LLP and Perkins Coie LLP are acting as legal counsel.

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About Paul Bubny

Paul Bubny serves as Senior Content Director for Connect Commercial Real Estate, a role to which he brings 16-plus years’ experience covering the commercial real estate industry and 30-plus years in business-to-business journalism. In this capacity, he oversees daily operations while also reporting on both local/regional markets and national trends, covering individual transactions across all property types, as well as delving into broader subject matter. He produces 7-10 daily news stories per day and works with the Connect team and clients to develop longer-form content, ranging from Q&As to thought-leadership pieces. Prior to joining Connect, Paul was Managing Editor for both Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com at American Lawyer Media, where he oversaw operations at both publications while also producing daily news and feature-length articles. His tenure in B2B publishing stretches back into the print era, and he has served as Editor in Chief on four national trade publications. Since 1999, Paul has volunteered as the newsletter editor of passenger rail advocacy groups (one national, one local).

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