Parent of Lord & Taylor plans stock offering

One of New York’s oldest and most storied department stores is about to open its doors to investors.

The retail conglomerate that owns Lord & Taylor — whose 98-year old Fifth Avenue flagship is among the largest in Manhattan — is planning a public stock offering this fall, sources told The Post.

Hudson’s Bay Co. — which also operates the Canada-based Bay department stores and is the oldest commercial operation in North America — could be valued at upward of $4 billion in a listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange, sources said.

The news was first reported yesterday on The Post’s website.

The deal promises a bonanza for Richard Baker, the New York real-estate mogul whose firm NRDC Equity Partners acquired Lord & Taylor in 2006 and Hudson’s Bay in 2008 in a pair of deals totaling slightly more than $2 billion.

Representatives of Hudson’s Bay and NRDC didn’t respond to requests for comment yesterday.

The cachet of both chains has increased as a team led by luxury veteran Bonnie Brooks has remodeled stores, upgraded fashions and improved service, says Wendy Liebmann of WSL Strategic Retail, an industry consulting firm.

“They deserve extraordinary credit in both the US and Canada,” Liebmann said, singling out remodeled stores and updated fashions at Lord & Taylor, and sleeker home furnishings at the Bay. “They took sleepy stores and added life to them, made them more contemporary.”

Baker weighed an IPO last year but, sources said, scuttled the plan amid uncertain market conditions.

Now, despite this fall’s iffy outlook for consumer spending, insiders close to the situation believe Hudson’s Bay could fetch as much as nine times its $450 million in Ebitda, or earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization.

While that’s a steep valuation for a department-store retailer, insiders noted that the company has been on a tear for the last four years, more than quadrupling its Ebitda by boosting sales and margins.

As such, bankers are aiming to sell 20 percent of Hudson’s Bay in an IPO that values the conglomerate at no less than $3.5 billion, including approximately $1 billion in debt.

“Look at David’s Bridal,” one insider said, noting that, after an uncertain auction, the wedding-dress retailer last month was acquired by Clayton Dubilier & Rice for a steeper-than-expected $1.05 billion.

“One of the things (Lord & Taylor is) doing extremely well is building products and entering into exclusive arrangements for merchandise,” said Gilbert Harrison, chairman of Financo, a New York investment bank. “It will be very exciting as they go into the next chapter.”

While Lord & Taylor traces its retail roots back to 1826, Hudson’s Bay was incorporated in 1670 as a fur-trading business.

Prior to being purchased by NRDC, Lord & Taylor spent most of the past few decades under the ownership of larger department stores including Federated, which has since changed its name to Macy’s.