Saks Kept 15 Stores While Rivals Took the Shoppers

Exemplar Luxury Group left Chapter 11 on June 26 with 15 Saks Fifth Avenue stores and a new set of owners.

Pentwater Capital Management and Bracebridge Capital each hold two seats on the seven-person board that took control when the old equity was wiped out. The Saks script is still on Fifth Avenue. The people who gained from the collapse are the rivals that kept shipping, hiring, and ringing up the old Saks customer.

Exemplar Luxury Group Took Control in June

The parent that once called itself Saks Global finished a five-month restructuring on June 26 and took the Exemplar name. Chief executive Geoffroy van Raemdonck, who ran Neiman Marcus Group from 2018 until the 2024 deal, stayed in the job he took when the petitions were filed. Independent directors Dave Kimbell, the former Ulta Beauty chief, and Philippe Schaus, who ran Moët Hennessy and sat on the LVMH executive committee, joined him.

The company’s own release touted a nearly 75 percent debt reduction, extra cash, and backing from the funds that financed the case. At emergence it also gained $500 million in exit financing and a new asset-based loan. Van Raemdonck told staff and vendors the banners would keep their names and that the parent label was meant to unite them, not bury Saks.

Moving forward as Exemplar Luxury Group reflects the shared ideals that anchor each of our banners and our commitment to setting the standard of excellence for luxury retail across all three.

Geoffroy van Raemdonck, Chief Executive Officer, Exemplar Luxury Group news release, June 26, 2026

He later said the group would buy more than $3 billion of goods at cost each year for Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bergdorf Goodman, and that brands were being paid on the terms each had agreed. That is the pitch. The map underneath it is much smaller than the one Richard Baker assembled.

Empty Racks Followed a $2.7 Billion Purchase

Saks Global bought Neiman Marcus Group for $2.7 billion in December 2024, folding in Bergdorf Goodman, Horchow, Saks Off 5th, and Last Call. Amazon put in $475 million of equity, tied to a “Saks on Amazon” shop that launched in April 2025 and to a promise of at least $900 million in payments over eight years. The deal was financed with about $2.2 billion of new bonds. Baker, a real-estate operator who had run Hudson’s Bay Company since it bought Saks in 2013, talked about luxury stores and prime property in the same breath.

Cash ran the other way. Mark Weinstein, the chief restructuring officer, told the Houston court that consolidated revenue for the year ended Feb. 1, 2025, fell 13.6 percent, and that in the second half of 2025 the company took in $550 million less in inventory receipts than it had forecast in July. A $600 million summer raise did not clear aged bills before the holidays. On Dec. 30, 2025, it missed a $100 million interest payment. Vendors stopped shipping. Shoppers walked onto floors that looked, as former St. Louis associate Anita Berger put it, like Off 5th.

THE PATH INTO HOUSTON

1. 2013: Hudson’s Bay Company, led by Richard Baker, buys Saks Incorporated.
2. 2014 to 2015: The land under the Manhattan flagship is mortgaged and securitized.
3. December 2024: Saks Global closes the $2.7 billion Neiman Marcus Group deal. Amazon invests $475 million.
4. April 2025: The Saks on Amazon virtual storefront launches.
5. Summer 2025: Bondholders provide $600 million of new money. It is not enough to restock for the holidays.
6. December 30, 2025: The company misses a $100 million interest payment.
7. January 13, 2026: Saks Global Enterprises LLC files Chapter 11 in the Southern District of Texas with $3.4 billion of funded debt.
8. March 2026: Exemplar says nearly 600 brands have resumed shipping.
9. June 26, 2026: The company emerges as Exemplar Luxury Group.
10. September 30, 2026: The original downtown Dallas Neiman Marcus closes after 112 years.

Weinstein’s declaration put the workforce at about 14,610 full-time and 2,220 part-time employees on the petition date, and counted roughly 70 full-line luxury doors plus off-price stores. Baker was gone in January. His public reply to questions about Saks was “No comment on Saks at this time.”

Who Got Paid After the Filing?

Unsecured trade claims were a fashion roll call. Court papers listed Chanel Limited at more than $136 million, then a string of groups whose own boutiques could absorb a hit that would wreck a small label. Lorenzo Marinuzzi, a Morrison Foerster partner for unsecured creditors including Chanel and LVMH, said paying old Hudson’s Bay paper while vendors waited “rubs people the wrong way.”

LARGEST BRAND CLAIMS IN THE FILING

The top 30 unsecured claims totaled about $712 million. Gary Wassner, chief executive of Hilldun, which guarantees payments for roughly 180 fashion and beauty brands, said the designers his firm works with were owed more than $66 million. Hilldun paid clients on the invoices it had approved. Independent houses without that backstop described six-figure holes, freelancer cuts, a canceled runway deposit, and in one case a 20 percent staff reduction.

Brands on concession or consignment recovered close to what they were owed, according to a person familiar with the payments. Some marquee names were made close to whole, on terms kept quiet so rivals could not demand the same. Amazon, which had called its $475 million stake “presumptively worthless” in court papers, saw that equity wiped with everyone else’s. Judge Alfredo Perez still let the company draw the first $400 million of a $1.75 billion debtor-in-possession package over Amazon’s objection.

Bloomingdale’s Took the Staff and the Shoppers

While Saks Global argued with vendors, Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom took the people who knew the clients. James Newell, a Saks men’s designer merchant, moved to Bloomingdale’s in 2025. Yumi Shin left Bergdorf Goodman’s merchandising job for Nordstrom; Catherine Bloom, a Neiman Marcus personal shopper, went the same way. In February 2026, people inside Bloomingdale’s said competitors’ staff and several brands were coming over, as the 59th Street flagship built a higher-end fourth floor with Chanel, Valentino, Erdem, Versace, and Stella McCartney.

Transaction data from Bloomberg Second Measure, cited by Bloomberg Intelligence, showed the split in mid-2025. In June that year Bloomingdale’s sales were up 13 percent, while Saks was down 28 percent and Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman were down 26 percent. Beauty executives said shipments and clients were already moving to those two floors before the Houston filing. Nordstrom lined up Chanel, Christian Louboutin, and Manolo Blahnik for its 125th anniversary in 2026. Bloomingdale’s had already tied itself to Burberry and Baccarat.

That shift sits on a longer slide. Bain & Company wrote in 2024 that many U.S. shoppers are now indifferent or averse to the format. North American department-store sales had fallen at a 6 percent compound annual rate from 2018 to 2023. In women’s clothing, four department stores sat in Bain’s top ten Net Promoter ranking in 2018; by 2023 only one remained, in eighth place, and shoppers aged 18 to 24 gave the format a score of -7. Marshal Cohen, chief retail adviser at Circana, has said the old cavernous model has to change. Aaron Cheris, who leads Bain’s global retail practice, put the post-bankruptcy test in one line: convince suppliers and customers there is a new day one.

Clearing the debt does not do that work. Bloomingdale’s had been renovating and hiring through the years Saks spent integrating systems and stretching payables, so the empty-rack period read as an opening, not a shared industry slump.

The $1.25 Billion Loan Under Fifth Avenue

The building at 611 Fifth Avenue opened on Sept. 15, 1924. In 2007 the United States Postal Service gave the eighth-floor shoe department its own ZIP Code, 10022-SHOE, for a space of about 8,500 square feet. That floor was the postcard. The land under it is a bond deal.

Saks Flagship Real Property LLC, a non-debtor affiliate, still carries a $1.25 billion mortgage on the land beneath the 655,238-square-foot flagship. S&P Global Ratings, reviewing the SFAVE 2015-5AVE certificates on May 27, 2026, described a 20-year, 4.39 percent interest-only loan due Jan. 1, 2035, secured by a leased-fee interest and a 99-year triple-net ground lease. The borrower had stayed current. The restructuring plan did not rewrite the lease or the loan. S&P affirmed its ratings and took them off CreditWatch.

Baker’s critics always said he ran stores like property. The Fifth Avenue land loan survived Chapter 11 in better shape than Chanel’s invoice. So did the idea, printed in a July 2024 release for the Neiman deal, that the company was “a combination of world-class luxury retail and real-estate assets.” Exemplar now talks about selling associates and white-glove service. The mortgage still sits under the marble.

Downtown Dallas Closed the Original Neiman

Neiman Marcus was founded in Dallas in 1907 and had sold from 1618 Main Street since 1914. On Sept. 30, 2026, that store went dark. A WARN notice filed with the Texas Workforce Commission listed 67 jobs. The company said NorthPark Center’s volume was more than ten times the downtown shop, and that a reworked Zodiac Room would open there before the holidays, along with Santa, who had still worn the Christmas vest on Main Street’s last day.

Dallas officials had already delayed an earlier shutdown. In June, as the parent left court, van Raemdonck’s team set the September date, saying the downtown door was not profitable. City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert called the store “a cornerstone of our central business district for more than a century.” Families came for a 91st birthday. Associates posed for last pictures. The original house of Neiman Marcus is now a vacant nine-story box in the central business district, while the surviving Dallas business lives at a mall.

WHAT THE NEW MAP KEPT

• Saks Fifth Avenue: 15 full-line stores after 18 closures, described by van Raemdonck as large doors in strong luxury markets.
• Neiman Marcus: 33 stores at emergence, before the downtown Dallas flagship closed on Sept. 30.
• Bergdorf Goodman: the women’s and men’s flagships on the Upper East Side, left intact.
• Saks Off 5th: 12 shops kept as a liquidation channel after 57 closures, with no fresh buying.
• Last Call and Horchow: the five Last Call stores shut; Horchow’s site was retired in February and folded into NeimanMarcus.com.

Chicago’s Saks, open since 1929, was among the full-line doors that went. So were Costa Mesa, Las Vegas, St. Louis, San Antonio, and McLean, Va. Discount chains moved on some of those leases. The lone overseas Saks, in Kazakhstan, was left open.

Fifteen Saks Stores Still Carry the Name

THE FILING, IN FOUR FIGURES

• Funded debt: $3.4 billion on the petition date, before the court cut most of it.
• Workforce: about 16,830 full- and part-time employees when the case began.
• Amazon check: $475 million of equity, later treated as gone.
• Saks doors left: 15, against 33 full-line stores at the filing.

On a recent walk through the Manhattan flagship, the floors were stocked again. Exemplar has said associates at Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue are seeing higher overall sales than in the same stretch of 2025, without saying by how much. Van Raemdonck wants a “double-digit EBITDA company.” Julia Stedman, a New York brand consultant who shopped Saks for decades, is taking a wait-and-see approach after a stretch when “what made Saks special was not there anymore.”

The winners already have what they came for. Two funds own the parent. Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom have the merchants, the beauty counters, and a run of shoppers who got tired of sparse size runs. Concession brands got closer to par. The losers are the small labels that ate the unpaid season, the associates in cities that lost their only luxury floor, and a Dallas flagship that outlived every owner until this one. The script on Fifth Avenue is unchanged. The customer now has somewhere else to go.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a completed bankruptcy and a still-changing retail business. It is for information only and is not investment, legal, or financial advice. It does not recommend buying, selling, or holding any claim, bond, equity, or other interest in Exemplar Luxury Group, its banners, or any vendor named here. Readers who have money or legal exposure in these companies should consult a licensed financial adviser, bankruptcy attorney, or accountant before acting. Figures and store counts reflect court papers, company statements, and public notices as of the dates cited and can change as claims are resolved.