Neiman Marcus says 1.1 million credit cards may have been compromised in data breach last year at its stores; online shoppers unaffected

Cindy Allen

January 23, 2014 (Bloomberg LP) – Neiman Marcus Group Ltd., the luxury retailer, said about 1.1 million credit cards may have been compromised in a data breach that occurred last year.

Visa, MasterCard and Discover have notified the Dallas- based department store chain that about 2,400 cards used at its stores between July 16 and Oct. 30 were used fraudulently, according to a statement today. Online shoppers weren’t affected, the company said.

Neiman Marcus is the second U.S. retailer to announce a customer data-security breach. Minneapolis-based Target Corp. has said as many as 110 million customer accounts were compromised during the holiday shopping season by the theft of information including names, home and e-mail addresses as well as credit and debit card data.

Neiman Marcus said it learned of the data hacking on Jan. 1 and investigations are being conducted. It has “taken steps to notify those affected customers for whom we have contact information,” according to the statement. The retailer is offering free credit monitoring to affected shoppers.

The company was bought last year by Ares Management LLC and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board from TPG Capital and Warburg Pincus LLC.

--Editors: James Callan, John Lear

To contact the reporter on this story: Renee Dudley in New York at rdudley6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Robin Ajello at rajello@bloomberg.net

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