Mergers & Acquisitions

The owner of one of the largest independent furniture chains in the country has sold his company to a private equity firm approximately 58 years after he founded it.  

A combination of factors, including innovation, cross-border deal interest and the availability of cash reserves, bodes well for deal activity in the retail and consumer markets.   That’s according to a review by PwC, which reported that the retail and consumer deals market ended 2016 with an increase in deal volume and a decline in deal value when compared to 2015.   

Luxury Brand Holdings, parent company of Ross-Simons and Sidney Thomas, has appointed James M. Speltz as president.    Speltz will join the company’s board and oversee all business activities. Most recently, he was COO for Teikametrics, a software and service provider to Amazon.com third-party merchants.  

Schostak Brothers has added six multi-tenant properties to its “Shadow Walmart” portfolio of retail space adjoining supercenters, bringing it to a total of 67. The new additions are located in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.   “In the last decade, we have pursued an aggressive growth strategy in order to assemble one of the largest Walmart Supercenter shadow-anchored shopping center portfolios in the United States,” said Schostak COO Warren Strietzel.  

An historic department store building that closed its doors and has been empty for 30 years — long enough for a tree to start growing inside it — has been given a brand new lease on life.  

Walmart made sweeping changes to its e-commerce organization for the second time since it acquired online retailer Jet.com and appointed company founder Marc Lore as head of its own e-commerce division. The latest move, announced in a memo to Walmart associates on Jan. 13, further consolidates the retail giant’s online properties, and strengthens Lore’s influence on the chain’s digital strategy as it faces-off with Amazon.    

Kevin Scott is joining Microsoft in the newly created role of chief technology officer (CTO).   Scott most recently served senior VP of infrastructure at LinkedIn, which Microsoft purchased in June for $26 billion.   

Every year after the holidays the same topics seem to dominate media coverage of the retail industry. The numbers are in, who’s closing stores? Who’s going out of business? Who are this year’s casualties in the great Clicks vs. Bricks War? This focus on post-holiday attrition is part of a larger conversation about the future of retail, one often tinged by notes of panic, dire predictions, and dramatic pronouncements such as: Online retail is damaging brick-and-mortar. Malls are dead! Retailers are shuttering hundreds of stores!