No Saks in the Champagne Room

Richard Baker
This merger was the brainchild of Richard Baker, a New York real estate developer who already owned Saks Fifth Avenue and the Hudson’s Bay Company. Photo: Robin van Lonkhuijsen/AFP/Getty Images)
William D. Cohan
May 4, 2025

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Sometimes you just have to marvel at the ability of Wall Street bankers to sell something that probably should never have been sold in the first place.  That’s essentially what happened with Saks Global, the $2.7 billion roll-up of luxury retailers Saks Fifth Avenue and NMG, the parent company of Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. One of the many remarkable features of the deal was the now-infamous $2.2 billion, 11 percent senior secured five-year bonds that Saks raised last December to help pay for NMG. I recently got a copy of the bond prospectus, and it’s a bruiser. At more than 400 pages, it tells quite a tale of hope over experience.