Macy's, Inc. (previously Federated Department Stores, Inc.) is an American holding company of department stores. Upon its establishment in 1929, Federated held ownership of the regional department store chains Abraham & Straus, Lazarus, Filene's, and Shillito's. Bloomingdale's joined Federated Department Stores the next year. Throughout its early history, frequent acquisitions and divestitures saw the company operate a number of nameplates. In 1994, Federated took over Macy's, the old department store chain originally founded in 1858 by American entrepreneur Rowland Hussey Macy. Despite Federated's long history of preserving regional nameplates, its acquisition of the May Department Stores Company in 2005 marked the end of those nameplates. By the following year, both the Macy's and Bloomingdale's brands had replaced them nationwide. Ultimately, Federated itself was renamed Macy's, Inc. in 2007, an acknowledgment of the old store's venerable name; the company bought Bluemercury in 2015 from Berry J. Beck and Marla Malcolm Beck, allowing the company to expand into beauty stores.

Macy's, Inc. owns the department store chains Bloomingdale's and Macy's, and beauty store chain Bluemercury, all of which operate flagship stores in Manhattan. As of October 2022^[update], it operates 722 locations in the United States, Guam, and Puerto Rico. The company was the world's largest fashion goods retailer and the 36th-largest retailer overall in 2010. Macy's, Inc. has been headquartered within Macy's Herald Square in New York City since 2020, and was previously headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio from 1945 until 2020.

Federated Department Stores traces its corporate lineage to F&R Lazarus & Company, founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1851. In the summer of 1929, months before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Fred Lazarus Jr. met with Walter N. Rothschild from Abraham & Straus of Brooklyn and Edward Filene from Filene's of Boston on Rothschild's yacht in Long Island Sound. The three businessmen agreed to merge their stores and form Federated Department Stores, as a department store holding company for F&R Lazarus & Company (including its Cincinnati division, then known as Shillito's), Abraham & Straus, and William Filene's Sons of Boston. In 1930, Bloomingdale Brothers of New York joined.

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. As well, Lazarus convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt that it would help American economy to change the Thanksgiving holiday from the last Thursday of November to the fourth Thursday, thus extending the Christmas shopping season. An act of Congress perpetuated the arrangement in 1941. Black Friday became a nationwide sensation and the most profitable day for Federated. (Robert Lazarus Jr. worked at Federated until he died in 2013, the last remaining family member with an official role at the company.)

In 1945, Federated moved its corporate offices to Cincinnati. 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. Federated entered the supermarket industry in 1968 when it acquired the Ralphs chain based in Southern California. In 1982, Federated acquired the Twin Fair, Inc. discount store chain based in Buffalo, New York, and merged it with Gold Circle. In 1983, Federated sold four shopping center properties to JMB Realty.

Canadian real estate developer Robert Campeau – who had taken over and dismembered Allied Stores in 1986 – attempted to take over Federated starting in early 1988 which Federated fought off in a high-profile battle, with Macy's (at that time not part of Federated, but a rival), also submitting competitive bids of over $6 billion. Nonetheless, in April 1988, Federated gave in and agreed to a $6.6 billion takeover by Campeau. It was the largest merger in corporate history, barring the oil sector. Macy's paid Campeau $1.1 billion to acquire the 20-store Bullock's/Bullocks Wilshire and the 25-store specialty apparel chain I. Magnin. Two years later, Federated filed for bankruptcy after Campeau failed to refinance the debt of Federated and Allied Stores Corp. In 1992, Campeau was ousted and Federated emerged from bankruptcy as a new public company, Federated Stores, Inc., dropping the word "Department" from the previous company. As part of the reorganization, Federated sold the Ralphs chain to a group of owners led by Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation.

Also in 1992, Macy's declared bankruptcy; Federated acquired it two years later, in 1994. The name of the once-main-rival of Federated, Macy's, would soon become the consumer-facing identity of most of Federated's stores.

In 1995 Federated bought Broadway Stores, Inc. and its California-based Emporium-Capwell, Weinstock's and The Broadway chains. Macy's changed the nameplate of these three chains and Bullock's to Macy's, or in some cases, turned locations into Bloomingdales. 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.