Thomas Macioce; Led Allied Department Store Group

Thomas M. Macioce, an attorney and former head of the Allied Stores Corp., which owned such department stores and specialty chains as Ann Taylor and Brooks Brothers, has died at age 71.

Macioce, a native New Yorker who lived in Brookville, N.Y., died Friday of leukemia at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York.

After joining Allied as a vice president in 1960, Macioce became president in 1970, chief executive in 1972 and chairman in 1981.

Macioce was credited with building Allied into an industry giant, selling off poorly performing companies and buying tony chains such as Bonwit Teller, Plymouth Shops, Garfinckel of Washington and Brooks Brothers.

“I don’t want the whole pie,” he once said of his retail acquisitions. “I want only the part that is the sweetest and the most satisfying.”

Macioce battled a hostile takeover attempt by the Canadian Campeau Corp. in 1986, with the help of his millionaire friend, shopping center developer Edward J. DeBartolo. But Campeau eventually merged with Allied, with Macioce remaining as chairman of the combined company and Robert Campeau as chief executive officer.

“We will not face the problem of a new management coming in,” Macioce said when the merger was announced in November, 1986.

But Campeau asserted control a few months later, and Macioce, then 68, retired. When he left, Allied had 684 stores and annual sales of $4.14 billion.

Macioce then became a senior partner in the New York law firm of Shea & Gold, responsible for setting up foreign offices.

Berfore Allied, Macioce had worked in the legal department of the Flintkote Co., was a vice president of Bloomsburg Mills, and was president of the factoring company L. F. Dommerich & Co.

Macioce was born in East Harlem to Italian immigrant parents and won a scholarship to Columbia College, where he captained the basketball team. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1939 and an LL.B. from Columbia Law School in 1942. He was a Navy lieutenant commander during World War II.

A Roman Catholic, Macioce was named by the Vatican last year to an international board of lay directors assigned to clean up the scandal-ridden Vatican bank.

He was a Knight of Malta and a Knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher, and president of the Inner-City Scholarship Fund of the New York Archdiocese.

Macioce is survived by his wife, Francesca Spinelli Macioce, a daughter, Francesca Beach of Chappaqua, N.Y., a brother and two grandchildren.