The Mexican retailer Liverpool has made a bid to become co-owner of the luxury U.S. department store Nordstrom and take the company private.
If the deal goes through, the Mexican firm Liverpool will increase its Nordstrom ownership from 9.6% to 49.9% of the outstanding shares, valued at $3.8 billion at $23 per share.
CEO Erik Nordstrom and his brother Pete, the company’s president, hope that going private will allow Nordstrom to focus on long-term strategic goals, without the constant need to meet quarterly growth targets.
The Seattle-based company has struggled in recent years, with revenues dropping almost $1 billion in four years (from $15.1 billion in 2019 to $14.2 billion in 2023), despite a 4.2% boost in early 2024 driven by Nordstrom Rack sales.
Liverpool is the fifth largest retailer in Mexico after Walmart, Oxxo, Sorianna and Coppel. It has 300 retail stores in Mexico: 124 under the brand of Liverpool boutiques and 188 Suburbia stores along with an e-commerce platform.
The company, which employs 80,000 people, also manages the Mexican operations of nearly 120 boutiques with U.S. partners. They include Gap, Banana Republic, Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn, West Elm, MAC and Kiehl’s. Nonetheless, the Nordstrom deal would be its first major venture in the United States.
A special committee of independent partners is evaluating the Liverpool-Nordstrom deal to ensure it aligns with the best interests of Nordstrom and its shareholders.
Liverpool hopes to follow in the footsteps of Mexican companies entering the U.S. market in a big way.
Last month, the owner of Mexico’s convenience store mega-chain Oxxo struck a $385 million deal with Tennessee-based oil holdings to acquire 249 DK convenience stories—mostly based in Texas.
