The rain on Macy's parade

One of The Wall Street Journal's most experienced reporters, Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, gives us a fly-on-the-wall account that details one of the more compelling high-stakes power struggles in the history of Seventh Avenue and Wall Street. The Rain on Macy's Parade is the inside story of how Macy's executives launched the largest leveraged buyout in retail history and brought the company to its knees. Based on scores of interviews with key players, Trachtenberg's book vividly describes how the chairman of Macy's succeeded in buying his company, only to suffer, ultimately, the fate of seeing his beloved store in the hands of the rival he most detested. Set against a backdrop of avarice, egotism, and boardroom battles, The Rain on Macy's Parade is peopled with an unforgettable cast that includes such characters as eccentric Canadian developer Robert Campeau, financier Laurence Tisch, and an improbable movie mogul named Sir Run Run Shaw. Trachtenberg recounts the drama of how Edward Finkelstein, a brilliant Harvard Business School graduate, revived R. H. Macy & Company in the 1970s and later grabbed control for a personal stake of less than $5 million. Finkelstein then made a disastrous bid for Federated Department Stores. In a cruel twist of fate, Macy's was acquired by Federated, setting the stage for a national retail industry controlled by only a handful of giants. . Here is a rollicking and insightful tale of the merchants of retail as they jockey for power and prestige, using daring tactics to win larger profits, push favored brands, position products more successfully. In the end, they would remake the retail industry but destroy a culture that was as revered as it was irreplaceable.