Judge Alfredo Pérez in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas on Friday approved $500 million in exit financing that Saks Global secured earlier this month.
The funds resolve the luxury retailer's core problem from last year — a dearth of inventory due to unpaid bills. Saks Global’s attempts to assure vendors, customers and investors that the issue was being resolved fell flat, and the company ultimately acknowledged that sales were suffering because it didn’t have enough merchandise.
This became a downward spiral. As the months went by, more vendors delayed or ended shipments to Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman — which had combined under the Saks Global umbrella in late 2024 as part of a $2.7 billion deal — leading several observers to predict that bankruptcy was becoming inevitable.
Upon signing the approval Friday, Pérez called out this fundamental collapse, noting that Saks Global entered the Chapter 11 process with highly constrained liquidity.
“The biggest issue was the inability to provide merchandise for the stores,” he said. “The proposed funding — and having liquidity in the hundreds of millions of dollars — is a proper exercise of the debtors’ business judgment. And I think it's a key cornerstone to the debtors being able to reorganize.”
Since filing for bankruptcy and bringing on new leadership, Saks Global has already begun to repair many of its vendor relationships. More than 650 have resumed shipping merchandise, up from 500 in early March, releasing $1.5 billion in retail receipts. The company also said it has most of the inventory expected for Q1.
