On June 6, 2026, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Alfredo Perez approved Saks Global's Chapter 11 reorganization plan at a hearing in the Southern District of Texas in Houston. The company will exit bankruptcy in the coming weeks with debt slashed by roughly 75% and a much smaller retail footprint: 49 stores across the combined portfolio, including 33 Neiman Marcus locations, 15 Saks Fifth Avenue stores, and Bergdorf Goodman.
This is an estimate, not a single-event disclosure. It combines two tranches reported across the bankruptcy process. The corporate cut on April 30, 2026 eliminated 640 positions, about 16% of corporate headcount, and was disclosed by WSJ. The store-level reductions through the spring totaled more than 1,200 jobs as Saks Global negotiated lease terminations and downsized its operating footprint. Together that is roughly 11% of the 17,000 employees on the books when Saks filed Chapter 11 on January 13, 2026.
Saks Global was formed when Hudson's Bay Company merged Saks Fifth Avenue with the Neiman Marcus Group in a $2.7 billion acquisition that closed in late 2024. The acquisition was financed with $2.2 billion in bonds. By Q2 2025, the combined entity carried roughly $4.7 billion in debt, much of it inherited from prior buyouts. Saks Global filed for Chapter 11 on January 13, 2026 after a months-long search for outside financing failed to materialize. Judge Perez approved a $1.75 billion debtor-in-possession loan two days later, over the objections of Amazon, which holds a minority stake in the company. CEO Geoffroy van Raemdonck, who led Neiman Marcus Group through its 2020 bankruptcy, was appointed to lead Saks Global through the restructuring.
The merger thesis was scale. The bankruptcy outcome is a smaller, less-leveraged luxury department store group with 49 doors instead of dozens more. Judge Perez called the 11-month turnaround "extraordinary" given the rocky start to the case. For the broader retail sector, the Saks outcome reinforces a pattern: legacy department stores can survive Chapter 11, but only by shedding store counts and headcount that were premised on a pre-2020 consumer baseline.