Saks Global has declared bankruptcy.
The owner of Saks Fifth Avenue and other iconic luxury department stores filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy late Tuesday in the Southern District of Texas. Each of Saks Global's marquee brands — it also owns Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman — is a luxury retailing giant founded more than a century ago.
The bankruptcy filing showed that Saks Global owes millions to the biggest names in luxury, including over $136 million to Chanel, $59 million to Gucci's parent company, Kering, and $33 million to Michael Kors' parent company, Capri Holdings.
As part of Saks Global's restructuring, the company announced that former Neiman Marcus chief executive Geoffroy van Raemdonck will immediately take the helm as CEO. He led Neiman Marcus through its own bankruptcy in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The court-supervised reorganization of the high-end department store parent — which Business Insider recently detailed in a deep-dive — has been anticipated for months amid signs that its 2024 deal to acquire Neiman Marcus, financed by $2.2 billion in high-interest bonds, has left it struggling financially.
The $2.7 billion deal, which included investments from Amazon and Salesforce, was intended to strengthen legacy brands by providing them with scale and creating efficiencies. Instead, it left the company burdened by hefty interest payments and unable to pay vendors.
By February 2025, then-Saks Global CEO Marc Metrick told vendors that the company wouldn't begin paying overdue invoices until July, at which point it would make payments in installments over 12 months.
Metrick stepped down as CEO in early January after a roughly three-decade career with the company and was replaced by then-executive chairman Richard Baker. Baker had the CEO role for less than two weeks before being replaced by van Raemdonck.
By June, the six-month-old debt was restructured after Saks fell short on a nine-figure interest payment that was due. The company missed another $100 million interest payment to bondholders that was due December 30, according to Bloomberg.
Some vendors, who told Business Insider they were not paid on the schedule meant to start in July, began shunning the luxury retailer as the holiday season approached.
"They must do something very quickly to rectify this situation in the market, or they will not have a spring season," Gary Wassner, the CEO of Hilldun Corp., which acts as a sort of guarantor or insurer for brands, told Business Insider in late December.
At the time of the interview, Hilldun, which works with about 140 brands shipping to Saks, had stopped backing shipments to the retailer until payments resumed at the agreed-upon terms.
Saks has recently faced multiple lawsuits from vendors accusing the company of failing to pay for merchandise that was sold and delivered.
One New York state lawsuit filed in October by Jovani Fashion, a dressmaker that "Real Housewives of New York" star Luann de Lesseps helped popularize, alleged that Saks owed it nearly $300,000. Saks' attorneys have denied the allegations in court papers.
The Tuesday bankruptcy filing showed that Saks Global had between 10,001 and 25,000 creditors. It also had between $1 billion and $10 billion in assets and the same in liabilities.
