On the surface, the bankruptcy of Saks Global looks like just another post-pandemic luxury collapse. But if you trace the paper trail, follow the acquisitions, and listen to the voices of devastated designers and unpaid vendors—it begins to look like something else entirely.
It begins to look like a Ponzi scheme dressed in designer labels, with the real prize being real estate, not fashion. And no one’s asking how this happened. Until now.
Who Owns Saks Global—and Why It Matters
Let’s follow the thread.
Saks Global is not just Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks Off Fifth. It now includes Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, and other once-sacred fashion houses. This empire was created by Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in 2024 after HBC acquired the Neiman Marcus Group for $2.7 billion. But who controls HBC?
That would be Richard Baker, a real estate developer who built his fortune not through fashion, but through land acquisition, mall development, and retail takeovers disguised as revitalization.
Baker runs NRDC Equity Partners, which controls both HBC and Saks Global. His background includes: buying Lord & Taylor for $1.2 billion and selling it off in pieces. Selling the flagship Lord & Taylor Fifth Avenue building to WeWork for $850 million Selling the operating company for just $100 million two years later. Flipping German retailer Galeria Kaufhof in a cross-border merger-turned-exit. Launching HBC Properties and Investments, which controls 40 million square feet of North American real estate. If this sounds more like asset harvesting than fashion revival, you’re right.
How Do You Buy Neiman Marcus for $2.7 Billion While Owing Millions to Designers?
That’s the billion-dollar question. As Saks Global collapsed into bankruptcy, tens of thousand’s of designers and venders were never paid. They were sent threatening letters that read like corporate blackmail.
Despite the glowing language of “clarity” and “partnership,” Saks Global’s letter to vendors reads more like an ultimatum than a plan. This letter confirms that vendors will not be paid what they are owed in full, and instead will receive payments in installments beginning in July 2025. However noting was ever paid.
“All purchase orders will be paid 90 days from receipt of inventory,” the letter reads, while urging vendors to continue shipping products immediately, or face being removed from the company’s “brand partner matrix.”
This is, effectively, corporate extortion. The subtext is chilling: keep sending us goods. Don’t ask for payment now. If you stop, we’ll cut you out. This is not partnership. This is coercion. Worse still, the letter boasts about strong financials, reduced leverage, and ample liquidity—even citing S&P’s “stable outlook” on the company—while telling designers and makers they must wait 18+ months to be paid in full.
This while the company quietly secured a $1.75 billion DIP (Debtor-In-Possession) loan, approved by a U.S. bankruptcy judge. The funds came from Pentwater Capital, Bracebridge Capital, and Bank of America, among others.
Here’s the breakdown: $1 billion in immediate cash infusion. $240 million from asset-backed lenders. $500 million more pledged after restructuring And still, vendors got nothing.
Let that sink in.
A company with billions in secured financing cannot—or will not—pay its own creators. Why? Especially when there products were already sold.
Because this was never about fashion. It was about holding and flipping real estate assets, while leveraging brand equity as bait.
The Enron Playbook in Prada
This isn’t just bad business. It begins to look like strategic asset stripping—a technique where you purchase companies not to run them, but to gut them. Real estate is parceled off. Legacy brands are bundled, bloated, and sold again. Meanwhile, workers, vendors, and customers are left with the illusion of stability.
It’s shorting the system from within, and it’s been done before: Enron, Lehman, Theranos—different industries, same pattern. The only twist here? It’s happening under a halo of luxury and no one’s stopping it.
What They Don’t Want You to See
Richard Baker is not just the chairman of Saks Global. He’s also: the former chairman of Retail Opportunity Investments Corp, which was sold to Blackstone in 2025. The force behind TheBay.com, Canada’s largest online marketplace. The CEO of a company that donated $5.8 million to mental health causes while ghosting the people they owe money to. Philanthropy on the front page. Extortion in the back office.
This Is What a Retail Coup Looks Like
Buy legacy brands at discount, strip them for property value, bundle and resell them as prestige assets, secure billions in financing using the illusion of value, leave creators unpaid and disposable….repeat. If vendors push back? Threaten them. If courts object? Bury them in acquisition structures and DIP financing.
This is not over, and neither are we. The real story starts here.
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