Allied Stores Corporation

Product Details

Historical Context

Hahn Department Stores was organized in December 1928 as a holding company for the purpose of purchasing a large number of long-established department stores. Hahn went public in early 1929 with a $22,700,000 offering of 6 percent convertible preferred stock and 454,000 shares of common stock.

Using the proceeds from this offering, the company initially acquired twenty-two stores nationwide that were determined by Hahn to have good earnings records and that were "the most important in their respective sections of the country." These companies included Jordan Marsh of Boston, L.S. Donaldson of Minneapolis, and the Bon Marche of Seattle. The Hahn strategy was that after the acquisition, each department store would continue to operate under its own name and under the same managers, who also owned a substantial amount of the common stock of Hahn. The central organization was presented as a place where "expert executives" would be concerned with coordination of buying merchandise and other activities that would benefit from a chain store.

The Hahn Department Store Company continued to operate under that name for only a few more years. In 1935 the Allied Stores Corporation was founded as a successor to Hahn. In the decades to follow, Allied continued to grow through sales and more acquisitions, until in 1986 it was acquired by the Campeau Corporation. Additional acquisitions included Bonwit Teller, Brooks Brothers, Ann Taylor, Garfinckel's and Stern's.

Allied and Federated Department Stores, another Campeau subsidiary, were merged in 1988 to form Federated Stores, Inc. In 1990 Federated filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, from which it emerged in 1992. In 1994 Federated and R.H. Macy & Co. merged, creating the largest department store chain in the United States.

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