The biggest retail news of the week is a just-signed deal that joins three of the nation’s leading luxury department store chains: Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. HBC, the parent company of Saks, has agreed to buy the parent of the other two chains for $2.65 billion. One surprise player in this deal is Amazon, which is taking a minority stake for reasons that aren’t yet clear. (Two-day shipping for your designer bags?) The newly merged company, to be called Saks Global, will continue to operate Saks, Neiman and Bergdorf as separate businesses.
