Upon its establishment in 1929, Federated held ownership of the regional department store chains Abraham & Straus, Lazarus, Filene's, and Shillito's.

Federated Department Stores traces its corporate lineage to F&R Lazarus & Company, founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1851.

[4] In the mid-1930s, a modern merchandising standard was set when Fred Lazarus Jr. arranged garments in groups of a single size with a range of style, color and price, basing the technique upon observations made in Paris.

(Robert Lazarus Jr. worked at Federated until he died in 2013, the last remaining family member with an official role at the company.

[6] The latter half of the 20th century saw the company expand nationwide, adding Rike Kumler of Dayton, Ohio (merged into Shillito's in the 1980s to become Shillito-Rike's); Burdines of Miami, Florida; Rich's of Atlanta, Georgia; Foley's of Houston, Texas; Sanger Brothers and A. Harris, both of Dallas, Texas (which were merged to form Sanger-Harris); Boston Store of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; MainStreet of Chicago, Illinois; Bullock's, of Los Angeles; I. Magnin, of San Francisco, California; Gold Circle; and Richway Discount Department Stores of Worthington, Ohio.

[7] In 1982, Federated acquired the Twin Fair, Inc. discount store chain based in Buffalo, New York, and merged it with Gold Circle.

[13] As part of the reorganization, Federated sold the Ralphs chain to a group of owners led by Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation.

In 2003, Federated changed the nameplates of almost all their remaining non-Macy's stores – the lone exception was Bloomingdales – to include the Macy's name, a rebranding internally dubbed Project Hyphen.

For example, Seattle-based The Bon Marché became Bon-Macy's; Goldsmith's in Tennessee became Goldsmith's-Macy's; Lazarus, Burdines, and Rich's also added "-Macy's" to their name.

A year later, the hyphenated names were changed to simply Macy's, a rebranding process referred internally to as Project Star.

Federated routinely forced credit card holders/debtors to sign an agreement that legally bound them to repay their outstanding balances instead of having the unsecured debt discharge via the filing of bankruptcy.

The merger was completed on August 30, 2005, after an assurance agreement was reached with the Attorneys General of New York, California, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

This number could fluctuate pursuant to Federated's negotiations with various mall landlords and its final decision regarding using former Macy locations for its luxury Bloomingdale's operation.

On January 12, 2006, Federated announced its plans to divest May Company's Lord & Taylor division (55 stores in 12 states) by the end of 2006.

On September 9, 2006, the former May Company store names Famous-Barr, Filene's, Foley's, Hecht's, The Jones Store, Kaufmann's, L. S. Ayres, Marshall Field's, Meier & Frank, Robinsons-May, and Strawbridge's disappeared as Federated switched most of them to the Macy's masthead and a few to the Bloomingdale's name.

[31] The reasoning for the proposed name change—according to Terry Lundgren, Federated's chairman, president, and chief executive officer—hinges on the large-scale conversions throughout the company toward the Macy's nameplate.

[35] On Wednesday, February 6, 2008, Terry Lundgren announced the localization strategy and the company's plan to shed 2,550 jobs.

On February 2, 2009, Macy's announced the elimination of 7,000 jobs, or 4% of its workforce, and slashed its dividend as it looked to lower expenses as part of a major restructuring.

"Reducing our workforce is an unfortunate outcome of the current economic environment, and I am frustrated that so many of our people will be unable to move forward with us as we proceed into a very exciting future for Macy's and Bloomingdale's" said Terry J. Lundgren, chairman, president and chief executive officer.

This news came after a gradual pulling out of the Cincinnati area, with most corporate executives, including the CEO, already at the company's other headquarters in New York City.

[45] The conversion of Marshall Field's in Chicago was particularly criticized, with many customers boycotting its historic State Street flagship store.