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Neiman Marcus Promotes Tansky

Retailer's president is new ceo

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Burt Tansky, president and coo of The Neiman Marcus Group (Chestnut Hill, Mass.), has been promoted to ceo. Robert Smith and Brian Knez, who were co-ceo's and co-vice chairmen, will remain vice chairmen of the board. Richard Smith continues as chairman. Tansky had also been interim chairman and ceo of Dallas-based Neiman Marcus Stores, the $2.14 billion retail operating division of the company.

The Neiman Marcus Group operates 31 Neiman Marcus stores in 20 states and the District of Columbia, two Bergdorf Goodman stores in New York and about 10 clearance centers. Its direct-marketing business, NM Direct, distributes catalogs. It also owns stakes in the Kate Spade and Laura Mercier brands of cosmetics and handbags.

Tansky, 63, came to the organization in 1989 as chairman and ceo of Bergdorf Goodman. He had earlier served as president of Saks Fifth Avenue.

Neiman Marcus had been one of retail's shining lights during the boom of the 1990s, repeatedly showing quarterly and annual comp-store sales gains as it continued to expand its chain and improve its stores. How it does in the current increasingly-tenuous economic climate is expected to be one of the windows into how retail in general will react. Its most recent quarterly report, for the period ending Jan. 27, 2001 (which includes the all-important holiday shopping season), showed a 2.5 percent gain in revenues over the same quarter a year earlier. But net earnings fell 3 percent, to $39.9 million, from a year ago.

Late last year, the retailer had warned that unexpectedly slow holiday sales would result in no quarterly earnings growth. It has estimated same-store sales growth of 3 to 5 percent for the rest of fiscal 2001, which then-ceo Robert Smith called “cautiously optimistic,” given “the current dismal state of U.S. retail.

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“In addition,” he said, “we face the challenge of cycling against double-digit comparable revenue gains in last year's third and fourth quarters.”

Showing few signs of slowing up its expansion, Neiman Marcus recently announced plans for a new 120,000-square-foot anchor store at The Shops at La Cantera in San Antonio (the retailer's seventh store in its home state). It will join Nordstrom, Dillard's and Foley's as anchors of the 1.3-million-square-foot retail center. Construction is scheduled to begin late in 2001 and completed in early 2004.

The Tansky promotion will become effective on May 14, when previous owner Harcourt General and The Neiman Marcus Group finally end their relationship. Harcourt had spun Neiman Marcus off in October 1999, but continued to provide certain management, accounting, financial, legal, tax and other corporate services. Harcourt, whose primary business is publishing, is set to be acquired by Anglo-Dutch publishing group Reed Elsevier. Neiman Marcus'corporate offices will be relocated to Dallas, where the retailer was founded in 1907.

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