Barneys on Sale?

Barneys New York's current Dubai-based private equity owner Istithmar is currently considering selling the luxury department store. Isthiimar acquired the company in November of 2007 for $942 million. Barnys though has run into trouble with a big decline in revenues as a result of the U.S. recession and its big debt load and weakend credit from its LBO. The department store is now estimated to be worth between $300 million and $400 million.

In the past five years there have been nine other department store chains acquired by private equity investors, according to the PitchBook Platform. The economy has not been friendly to these investements with two, Mervyns and Fortunoff, going bankrupt in 2008 and Neiman Marcus Group, which was acquired for $5.1 billion by TPG Capital And Warburg Pincus in 2005, suffering a 28% drop in fourth quarter sales.