Crown Books Sells All Its Shares of May Co. Stock

Crown Books, the discount book retailer whose plans to accumulate more May Department Stores Co. stock had unsettled May Department Stores’ directors, has sold all of its 440,000 shares for about $18.8 million.

Officials of Crown, which operates a chain of more than 170 bookstores, could not be reached for comment Thursday. Leonard Straus, chairman of Thrifty Corp., which owns 34% of Crown Books and had joined forces with Crown to buy May Department Stores stock, also was unavailable.

The sale was disclosed in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

The divestiture of stock, carried out in a series of open-market sales between March 20 and March 26, came just two weeks after Crown had concluded the purchase of 69,700 shares of May Department Stores common stock for $3.3 million.

In February, when May Department Stores directors became aware that Crown was making those purchases, they expressed concern that Crown might be planning to buy a significant stake in their company.

May directors issued a statement saying Crown’s acquisition of a significant number of shares “would not be in the best interest of the shareholders, employees or customers of the May Department Stores.”

In February, a spokesman for May Department Stores said Crown held less than 1% of May Department Stores’ 43 million shares of outstanding common. However, the May spokesman indicated that his company didn’t know whether any of Crown’s affiliates had bought or planned to buy a significant amount of May’s stock.

May Department Stores’ stock closed Thursday at $46.875 on the New York Stock Exchange, down 50 cents.