Saks changes management, considers selling what's left

The New York Times has two articles on Saks. Yesterday's was about selling the Parisian chain:

The move would continue a sell-off of stores by Saks, which announced in late October that it is selling roughly 140 stores in its Northern department store group to Bon-Ton Stores Inc. for $1.2 billion. Belk Inc. purchased its Proffitt's and McRae's stores for $623 million in July.

But it also featured a big management shuffle -- the Chief Executive and the CEO/Chairman were dumped. I loved the wording concerning the CEO: "The company said Wilson quit after directors decided to eliminate the position." Doesn't having your position eliminated mean you've been fired? How do you quit at that point?

Today, the Times talks more about the management change and about the likelihood of Saks Fifth Avenue being sold, in addition to Parisian.

An interesting point in today's article is the comparison of operating margins at three leading luxury chains:

• Neiman-Marcus 9.7%
• Nordstroms 7.7%
• Saks Fifth Avenue 3.0%

Which could be interpreted by a potential investor either as "SFA is hopeless, why buy them?" or "There's a lot of upside here."