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First Brands Group LLC delayed job cuts at its Cleveland corporate office. Sixty-seven corporate employees will stay until May 31. Three hundred forty-five Tiffin facility employees also face delayed job cuts. The automotive parts company is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company is negotiating to sell parts of its U.S. business.
Cleveland, Ohio
https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2026/05/first-brands-adjusts-layoff-plan-at-cleveland-corporate-office.html
Saks Global is reducing its corporate headquarters workforce. The company is cutting 16 percent of these positions. This action impacts approximately 640 workers. These layoffs reflect an optimized operational footprint. Saks Global filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year.
New York, New York
https://wwd.com/business-news/retail/saks-global-sets-more-layoffs-at-corporate-office-1238935066/
QVC Group Inc. entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This includes a debt restructuring agreement. The company aims to substantially reduce its debt. Its debt balance was approximately $6.60 billion. The plan expects to reduce this to $1.3 billion.
West Chester, Pennsylvania
https://nationaljeweler.com/articles/14888-qvc-group-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy
Del Monte Food Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2025. The company aimed to sell its assets and improve its financial standing. Most of its operations found buyers, but a food processing plant in Modesto, California, did not. This facility permanently closed its doors on April 7. The closure resulted in the layoff of 765 employees.
Modesto, California
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/140-year-old-del-monte-lays-off-765-amid-bankruptcy/ar-AA20B5Wq?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds
Just remember when Chapter 11 hits and severance goes away you were offered a VRIF when you are walking to your car after a IRIF hits you.
Hearing some buzz about Xerox filing for bankruptcy within the next week.
Now that we are down one CEO will we lose another one before Chapter 11 filing? Who will be the one holding the pen signing the final page of the chapter 11 :)
Would they do that?
If ch 11 is filed is severance also gone?
Saks spins the chapter 11 into something “transformative” to “ well position Saks for a strong future “
OMG!
North Star Health Alliance announced workforce adjustments across its organization. A few dozen positions are believed to be affected by these changes. The company stated these actions are part of additional operational restructuring. North Star Health Alliance is currently operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy. These steps are considered necessary to strengthen the organization for the future.
Watertown, New York
https://www.wwnytv.com/2026/03/20/north-star-announces-workforce-adjustments-few-dozen-positions-possibly-affected/
Luxury retailer Saks Global filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January. The company is now closing 12 Saks Fifth Avenue stores. This action will result in over 1,200 permanent job cuts. Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filings confirmed the layoffs in March. Employee separations are scheduled to take place throughout May.
https://www.thestreet.com/retail/luxury-retail-giant-saks-global-cuts-over-1200-jobs-after-bankruptcy-filing
Reminder Chapter 11 is not an automatic liquidation of the business. It's not the end of the world, is it a bad situation to be in YES but it's not shut everything down and everyone just goes home.
Will the company that come out of Chapter 11 be different than the one that goes in for sure, will it be what is needed to shed some leadership along with processes, procedures and products that we need to drop to survive hopefully the answer is yes.
Many of us will find new jobs and careers at different employers but at the end of the day Xerox as a brand and company (under a new structure after Chapter 11) will remain.
Many leaders, accountants and lawyers will make some good money off the entire filing of Chapter 11 and the company will come out the other side much leaner. There will be questions on if different services / part of the company is sold off and etc. of course.
At the end of the day.. everyone still at Xerox at this point needs to make sure that there resume, education and skills and/or retirement plans are mapped out. If your still young in the workforce make sure your doing things to make yourself employable by the industry your in not the employer you report to today.
"Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code enables corporations, partnerships, and individuals to reorganize their financial affairs while continuing operations. It provides a structured process to pay creditors over time, often allowing businesses to avoid total liquidation. Key benefits include the "automatic stay" on debt collection and, in many cases, allowing the debtor to remain in control as a "debtor in possession""
Whom is going to pickup Xerox when it goes up on the block? Will Xerox split of ITSavy before the print and copier business goes up for sale? And how many months do we all think before we start these steps?
The more I think about the JV and the future I'm starting to see this as a excellent legal way to protect the IP in filing Chapter 11. We don't fully own it we are licensing it; claims of debt holders may not be able to make claims against it.
A thought is if the JV owns the IP and Xerox goes under and resurfaces form bankruptcy as technically and legally another company then the IP could be re licensed to the new company.
There could be a silver lining in this JV setup in a bankruptcy; the stock holders get sc--wed, outstanding debt gets taken care off, any pension plans get wiped off the books and the new emerged Xerox goes back to licensing the IP and back to business with a smaller and leaner operation.
What Ford must do immediately is to do away with offering any kind of implied Warranty on all new Ford vehicles offered for sale and state Ford vehicles will only be sold AS-IS WHERE IS. This bold change in Fords sale tactics will have a immediately positive effect on Fords bottom line. Because it will stop the massive cash burn to cover Ford vehicle recalls, lawsuits and other expenses related to offering vehicle warranties.
Having eliminated offering vehicle Warranty's Ford will no longer have a need for massive staffs for internal groups such as Ford Owner support groups, or groups that put together repair documents and any other groups that are involved with customer care post buyer support. With no need of these internal groups, Ford can most easily cut staff by 20-30%.
Ford needs to start thinking outside the box to determine other ways they can slow the internal cash hemorrhaging. Other wise Ford may fine themselves unable to fund continued day-to-day operations and having to file for Chapter 11 protection.
This comment on another post [Post ID: @OP+1kh9rs9x2] is a very good factual summary. I like how the OG poster explained how/why/what/when that led to the Chapter 11 and going Private. Pretty stunned that, despite all the verifiable facts and SEC Filings that some people still believe (see comments) the Chapter 11 was a choice and that Alan Masarek had any other option available to him. Jim Chicago & Kieran McGrath were protected by the Chapter 11 Filing. If not, they would not have escaped criminal charges brought by the SEC (note -- different than civil suits they have escaped). Avaya would have liquidated without the chapter 11 due to the irregularities in the SEC filings.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
August 9, 2022 SEC 12b-25
NOTIFICATION OF LATE FILING
"Furthermore, and separately [from the delayed 10-Q SEC Earnings Report Filing] the Audit Committee has also commenced an internal investigation to review matters related to a whistleblower letter that remains ongoing"
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418100/000141810022000083/formnt10-q3q22.htm
Apollo and it's army of organizations that conspire to take over companies "stepped in" by creating an entrapment to force Alan Masarek's hand into allowing the Chapter 11 so they could steal equity and take Avaya private.
TIMELINE REMINDER
The Subscription game-- which was a risky short-term strategy to falsely inflate the Market Valuation of Avaya so the greedy BoD and C-Suite could sell Avaya for north of $5b -- caught up to them and they had nowhere to hide in March 2022. Now IF they could book an enormous deal they could have extended the charade for another few quarters. That deal was to be Wells Fargo, if memory serves. So they delayed earnings in hopes to find an accounting workaround to explain away the unexplainable math that was the earnings reality. NOTE -- They spent since late 2019 fudging the numbers based on an algorithm of subscription-economy math that assumed a set value for each base client multiplied by market potential for signing the base clients to a subscription plan. THESE WERE NOT REAL #'s!!! For many quarters they could escape scrutiny b/c maintenance contracts were still collecting money. But when the first round of the 3 yr subscription deals were up, they were left with evaporated maintenance deals and accelerated client departures. It was one large empty hole.
In May 2022, the situation hit severe crisis status. There was no explaining away the #s. They needed more than just one enormous deal. The Slippery Slope Subscription game was now a runaway train. The BoD knew they needed something extreme to buy time to avoid being exposed for the 3.5 yr con-game of pretending that the marketing soundbytes of the "subscription economy" translated into real revenue. They initiated the age-old strategy of the CEO-Shuffle and began an aggressive search to name a new CEO before they had to face yet another SEC filing delay. They begin talks with Masarek in May. Hire him in June. Announce him in July. Masarek is up for the challenge and confident he can stabilize Avaya by December .....HOWEVER
Apollo Global deploys a leveraged lending takeover plan. It was an unofficial hostile takeover. They are able to secure some of the leveraged lending related to Avaya loans, yet not enough to execute a hostile takeover. So they instead devise a plan to make things so uncomfortable for Avaya leadership that they will just give in. They deploy their go-to auditing firms and dirty PR spin-doctors to both a) find dirt on Avaya to use as leverage; and b) entrap Avaya via auditing. This included names like Alix Partners.
August 2022 -- Internal Audit discloses that Avaya lacked Internal Controls due to a broken process of formally investigating Ethics and Corporate Compliance reports. One example was a "Whistleblower" which filed a formal complaint months (maybe even a year) prior questioning accounting documentation of subscription deals and the risk to the overall business. At the time of the report, it was Shefali Shah's responsibility to ensure the complaint was properly and formally investigated. Instead, it was never even pursued. The independent auditing firm identified the breach of protocol that must be followed by any publicly traded company. Therefore, they were obligated by law to report the breach of protocol to the SEC in their next "we still can't file earnings" extension filing. This is called an "ICFR Weakness
November 28, 2022 SEC FORM 8-K Avaya Admits to Lack of Internal Controls based on result of investigation. This essentially states that they violated SEC Rules by not pursuing the whistleblower complaint, however stops short that the complaint itself qualified as a whistleblower concern. "The deficiencies in internal control over financial reporting (ICFR) represented “material weaknesses,” the cloud technology company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
Avaya discloses ICFR weaknesses linked to whistleblower logs Compliance Week
https://www.complianceweek.com/accounting-and-auditing/avaya-discloses-icfr-weaknesses-linked-to-whistleblower-logs/32407.article
Avaya CEO To Get $6 Million Cash Award As Potential Bankruptcy Looms https://www.channelfutures.com/regulation-compliance/avaya-ceo-to-get-6-million-cash-award-stock-falls-below-nyse-minimum
SO @ab IS SPOT IN. THE WHISTLEBLOWER WAS REAL. IT WAS THE Everything. without that Whistleblower report Internal Controls Snafu, Apollo wouldn't have had the chance to deploy their gremlins to force AM into a takeover (also known as conspired Chapter 11).
A Texas judge ordered Chapter 11 trustees for Kentucky Owl and Stoli bankruptcies. Lender Fifth Third Bank successfully argued for an orderly sale of 35,000 bourbon barrels. This approach aims to maximize recovery for creditors over immediate liquidation. The wider bourbon industry faces a downturn, impacting several companies. Major brands like Brown-Forman and Diageo have announced layoffs due to declining sales.
https://www.kentucky.com/lexgoeat/bourbon/article314595107.html
Robert Bearden Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The trucking carrier submitted its voluntary petition on January 26. Court records show the company listed between 1 and 49 creditors. Assets and liabilities were estimated between $0 and $50,000. Drivers were reportedly instructed to return company trucks.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/georgia-based-carrier-with-128-drivers-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy
Cardone Industries is closing two facilities located in Texas. This action affects 129 employees in Harlingen and Arlington. The closures stem from parent company First Brands Group's financial and legal issues. First Brands Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September.
https://www.expressnews.com/business/article/first-brands-cardone-texas-closure-layoffs-fraud-21329238.php
Eddie Bauer faces expected bankruptcy. Recent layoffs preceded this. The layoffs happened at the company's headquarters. Bankruptcy is now anticipated. These two events are linked.
https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2026/02/03/eddie-bauer-prepares-chapter-11-filing.html
I can't believe they waited until the end of the day to start the walkouts. 3 so far when they got to me. I hope they can actually afford the severance they offered.
Francesca's, a women's fashion retailer, will close all its stores. The company filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. It plans to liquidate all inventory. Going-out-of-business sales are currently underway. This decision follows a lender default notice and lost investor funding.
ttps://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/2026/01/29/is-francescas-closing-stores-in-louisiana-retailer-filed-for-bankruptcy-going-out-of-business-sales/88412473007/
Holy Cow this company is cooked. Absolutely rutterless townhall talking about AI. I wouldn't be surprised if this company chapter 11s in the next 3 years. And Optum is sold off for scraps
Link to the article: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/14/saks-global-files-for-bankruptcy-protection.html
Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLbYeI7vvw4
Link to the article: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/14/saks-global-files-for-bankruptcy-protection.html
Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLbYeI7vvw4
source: https://therobinreport.com/saks-global-another-trainwreck/
01.07.26: The Robin Report: Saks Global: Another Trainwreck by Mark Cohen
Saks Global is Richard Baker’s next and maybe his final retail failure. Lord & Taylor, The Hudson Bay Company in all its various iterations in Canada and Europe, and now the monstrosity he recently created by putting Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off Fifth, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman together, teeters on bankruptcy. This recent disaster is the result of the company’s failure to make a required $100 million interest payment to lenders at year’s end.
Baker, as a real estate manipulator, gets high marks. As a retail leader and retail strategist, however, he has been an abject failure.
Baker Shadow Play
Baker suddenly appeared on the retail scene in 2006 when his real estate company, NRDC, bought Lord & Taylor from the newly branded Federated/Macy’s Corporation, which inherited L&T when it acquired May Company stores. Then, in 2008, Baker acquired control of The Hudson Bay Company following the untimely death of its majority shareholder. Three years later, in 2011, Baker’s HBC sold its Zeller’s stores in Canada to Target Corporation for $1.8 billion. Kudos to Baker, as most of the Zeller’s store locations were arguably worthless as hapless Target would soon find out.
When I was Director of Retail Studies at the Columbia Business School, I attended a student-led Retail and Luxury Goods Conference in 2012, keynoted by Baker. He gave a rambling off the cuff 40-minute presentation in which he regaled the 250 students and guests in the audience about how great it was to be rich; how he did little work at Wharton having surrounded himself with “good looking babes” eager to do his work; and how he had just “stolen” Lord & Taylor from Federated for $1.2 billion. Narcissism aside, he was likely correct in his view that Federated could not wait to unload L&T as an outlying May Company property. He went on to talk about how easy it was to master the art of merchandising based on his exposure to L&T’s business. Completely put off by this performance, I was unfortunately seated in a location that precluded me from leaving early.
Next in 2013, Baker acquired Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks Off Fifth stores in what might be described as another triumph of price over value. Saks’ management had failed to fully recognize the leverage it could have used on its own behalf based on its Fifth Avenue store’s real estate valuation. Baker, as a real estate manipulator, gets high marks. As a retail leader and retail strategist, however, he has been an abject failure. His stewardship of Lord & Taylor was pathetic.
In an effort to cut expenses, he attempted to rationalize back-of-the-house activities between Canada-based Bay stores and American-based L&T stores, which may have made sense to some clueless consultant but never worked in retail reality. He then came up with a scheme to downsize the L&T Fifth Avenue flagship and sold the building to that other paragon of business strategy, WeWork, eventually ki-ling the L&T brand.
Baker and The Bay
The disruption and ultimate liquidation of The Bay’s principal competitor in apparel, accessories and soft home, Sears Canada, should have resulted in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but The Bay failed to capitalize on it.
Moving Saks Fifth Avenue stores into The Bay stores spaces in Canada and introducing Saks Off Fifth in Canada was another failed initiative. In fact, moving Saks Fifth Avenue into a cavernous “low-brow” Bay location on Queen Street adjacent to the Eaton Center in Toronto was an incredible misstep in and of itself. The physical space was available, but the luxury customer certainly wasn’t there.
Opening over a dozen Bay department stores in the Netherlands in 2017 was another bone-headed move. Baker did a complex deal with Germany-based Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, securing retail space in the Netherlands, but again the customer just wasn’t there. Allegedly, Baker believed that since the Canadian Army liberated the Netherlands from the Na-is at the end of WWII, the Dutch would welcome a Canadian company with open arms. It didn’t happen. The Dutch Bay stores were all closed by 2019. The customers who might have remembered being liberated in 1945 were either dead or too old to patronize a Canadian-owned department store. Baker claimed he made money on this ridiculous foray, and he may very well have, but the Dutch paid a terrible price for this catastrophe.
Baker Business Model
In 2024, Baker set his sights on acquiring Sak’s principal competitor, Neiman Marcus/Bergdorf Goodman. The timing wasn’t great. There was the disappearance of luxury competitor Barney’s, and the Saks business at best treaded water. Also, Neiman Marcus/Bergdorf Goodman was struggling to put a challenging Chapter 11 Bankruptcy proceeding behind it.
There was also the monetization of hbc.com and saks.com, which raised a considerable amount of money from a group of hapless investors. These investors did not realize how completely counterproductive this strategy would prove to be.
Along the way, Richard Baker has presided over a never-ending list of lead executives, many of whom barely lasted two years with the company. There was Tina Johnson, Jeff Sherman, Bonnie Brooks, Jerry Storch, and Helena Foulkes, among others. And then there was Marc Metrick, whose 30-year tenure with Saks has just come to an abrupt end. But maybe it was 30 years too long. Metrick was a planning executive at Saks who, in recent years, masqueraded as its lead merchant.
Debt Economics
The history of two weak and/or weakened retail companies merging and finding success is simply this: There is no history. Add to that the non-starter of two companies that essentially do business with the same customer and in many cases in the same geographic locations. But these hurdles didn’t stop Baker from consummating a debt-laden merger of two icons. And incomprehensibly, for well over a year, the company failed to pay many of Saks’ vendors either on time or in many cases at all. So, now both companies have just completed a poor 2025 in sales. And having been cut off from receiving fresh inventory by a cynical factor community, Saks Global just failed to make that $100 million year-end interest payment.
Baker in Bankruptcy
Maybe Baker will come up with a bundle of new cash. If business remains as poor as it has been, any new cash infusion would only be a stopgap measure. Alternatively, the company might come up with a prepackaged restructuring agreement with its creditors. Or it will surrender to a voluntary or involuntary bankruptcy proceeding.
I’m not a bankruptcy attorney, but having lived through Federated department store’s successful restructure, and an up close and personal experience with Bradlees stores eventual failed emergence from bankruptcy, I think the bell may soon toll for Saks Global.
If it files for Chapter 11 financial relief, creditors organize and line up based upon their preexisting credit agreements (or lack thereof). Secured creditors, typically the company’s lenders, rely on collateral rights while unsecured creditors, typically vendors and service providers, hope for some eventual relief through the bankruptcy process. All payables from the company, whether current or past due, are frozen.
In a bankruptcy, legal and financial restructuring professionals line up for a typically substantial fee opportunity. A new lender or a consortium of lenders emerges to provide Debtor in Possession funding to enable the company to stay upright while in bankruptcy. All vendors are asked to resume shipping based on the newly created surety of DIP financing.
But, lacking confidence that past due receivables will eventually be paid, many vendors resort to selling their company receivables to distressed debt (or vulture) investors for substantial discounted values. This, in my opinion, is a terrible flaw in the bankruptcy process in that unsecured vendors, who you would expect to have a stake in the company’s eventual successful emergence from bankruptcy, have now traded places with investors seeking a fast financial return.
Saks Global at Risk
If Sak’s Global were operating as a stable platform with a successful sales and margin track record, with capable senior leadership, a reliable operating strategy, and good relationships with its vendors and customers, there would be ample reason for the company to navigate through bankruptcy and emerge with new debt and a newly restructured balance sheet. But none of this appears to be the case. As 2026 unfolds to what will undoubtedly be a challenging year for all retailers, the prospects for Saks Global are truly grim. My sense is that many vendors long ago stopped shipping or have curtailed their support for Saks, Neiman Marcus and maybe even Bergdorf Goodman, and they are unlikely to get back on board after having been egregiously abused these past few years.
Many will find another retailer to serve their customers if they haven’t already done so or continue to build a direct-to-consumer model of their own. Why wouldn’t they? Who needs the sturm und drang of a failing retail partner who doesn’t pay its bills? If that happens, Saks Global is toast.
source: https://therobinreport.com/saks-global-another-trainwreck/
01.07.26: The Robin Report: Saks Global: Another Trainwreck by Mark Cohen
Saks Global is Richard Baker’s next and maybe his final retail failure. Lord & Taylor, The Hudson Bay Company in all its various iterations in Canada and Europe, and now the monstrosity he recently created by putting Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off Fifth, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman together, teeters on bankruptcy. This recent disaster is the result of the company’s failure to make a required $100 million interest payment to lenders at year’s end.
Baker, as a real estate manipulator, gets high marks. As a retail leader and retail strategist, however, he has been an abject failure.
Baker Shadow Play
Baker suddenly appeared on the retail scene in 2006 when his real estate company, NRDC, bought Lord & Taylor from the newly branded Federated/Macy’s Corporation, which inherited L&T when it acquired May Company stores. Then, in 2008, Baker acquired control of The Hudson Bay Company following the untimely death of its majority shareholder. Three years later, in 2011, Baker’s HBC sold its Zeller’s stores in Canada to Target Corporation for $1.8 billion. Kudos to Baker, as most of the Zeller’s store locations were arguably worthless as hapless Target would soon find out.
When I was Director of Retail Studies at the Columbia Business School, I attended a student-led Retail and Luxury Goods Conference in 2012, keynoted by Baker. He gave a rambling off the cuff 40-minute presentation in which he regaled the 250 students and guests in the audience about how great it was to be rich; how he did little work at Wharton having surrounded himself with “good looking babes” eager to do his work; and how he had just “stolen” Lord & Taylor from Federated for $1.2 billion. Narcissism aside, he was likely correct in his view that Federated could not wait to unload L&T as an outlying May Company property. He went on to talk about how easy it was to master the art of merchandising based on his exposure to L&T’s business. Completely put off by this performance, I was unfortunately seated in a location that precluded me from leaving early.
Next in 2013, Baker acquired Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks Off Fifth stores in what might be described as another triumph of price over value. Saks’ management had failed to fully recognize the leverage it could have used on its own behalf based on its Fifth Avenue store’s real estate valuation. Baker, as a real estate manipulator, gets high marks. As a retail leader and retail strategist, however, he has been an abject failure. His stewardship of Lord & Taylor was pathetic.
In an effort to cut expenses, he attempted to rationalize back-of-the-house activities between Canada-based Bay stores and American-based L&T stores, which may have made sense to some clueless consultant but never worked in retail reality. He then came up with a scheme to downsize the L&T Fifth Avenue flagship and sold the building to that other paragon of business strategy, WeWork, eventually ki-ling the L&T brand.
Baker and The Bay
The disruption and ultimate liquidation of The Bay’s principal competitor in apparel, accessories and soft home, Sears Canada, should have resulted in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but The Bay failed to capitalize on it.
Moving Saks Fifth Avenue stores into The Bay stores spaces in Canada and introducing Saks Off Fifth in Canada was another failed initiative. In fact, moving Saks Fifth Avenue into a cavernous “low-brow” Bay location on Queen Street adjacent to the Eaton Center in Toronto was an incredible misstep in and of itself. The physical space was available, but the luxury customer certainly wasn’t there.
Opening over a dozen Bay department stores in the Netherlands in 2017 was another bone-headed move. Baker did a complex deal with Germany-based Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, securing retail space in the Netherlands, but again the customer just wasn’t there. Allegedly, Baker believed that since the Canadian Army liberated the Netherlands from the Na-is at the end of WWII, the Dutch would welcome a Canadian company with open arms. It didn’t happen. The Dutch Bay stores were all closed by 2019. The customers who might have remembered being liberated in 1945 were either dead or too old to patronize a Canadian-owned department store. Baker claimed he made money on this ridiculous foray, and he may very well have, but the Dutch paid a terrible price for this catastrophe.
Baker Business Model
In 2024, Baker set his sights on acquiring Sak’s principal competitor, Neiman Marcus/Bergdorf Goodman. The timing wasn’t great. There was the disappearance of luxury competitor Barney’s, and the Saks business at best treaded water. Also, Neiman Marcus/Bergdorf Goodman was struggling to put a challenging Chapter 11 Bankruptcy proceeding behind it.
There was also the monetization of hbc.com and saks.com, which raised a considerable amount of money from a group of hapless investors. These investors did not realize how completely counterproductive this strategy would prove to be.
Along the way, Richard Baker has presided over a never-ending list of lead executives, many of whom barely lasted two years with the company. There was Tina Johnson, Jeff Sherman, Bonnie Brooks, Jerry Storch, and Helena Foulkes, among others. And then there was Marc Metrick, whose 30-year tenure with Saks has just come to an abrupt end. But maybe it was 30 years too long. Metrick was a planning executive at Saks who, in recent years, masqueraded as its lead merchant.
Debt Economics
The history of two weak and/or weakened retail companies merging and finding success is simply this: There is no history. Add to that the non-starter of two companies that essentially do business with the same customer and in many cases in the same geographic locations. But these hurdles didn’t stop Baker from consummating a debt-laden merger of two icons. And incomprehensibly, for well over a year, the company failed to pay many of Saks’ vendors either on time or in many cases at all. So, now both companies have just completed a poor 2025 in sales. And having been cut off from receiving fresh inventory by a cynical factor community, Saks Global just failed to make that $100 million year-end interest payment.
Baker in Bankruptcy
Maybe Baker will come up with a bundle of new cash. If business remains as poor as it has been, any new cash infusion would only be a stopgap measure. Alternatively, the company might come up with a prepackaged restructuring agreement with its creditors. Or it will surrender to a voluntary or involuntary bankruptcy proceeding.
I’m not a bankruptcy attorney, but having lived through Federated department store’s successful restructure, and an up close and personal experience with Bradlees stores eventual failed emergence from bankruptcy, I think the bell may soon toll for Saks Global.
If it files for Chapter 11 financial relief, creditors organize and line up based upon their preexisting credit agreements (or lack thereof). Secured creditors, typically the company’s lenders, rely on collateral rights while unsecured creditors, typically vendors and service providers, hope for some eventual relief through the bankruptcy process. All payables from the company, whether current or past due, are frozen.
In a bankruptcy, legal and financial restructuring professionals line up for a typically substantial fee opportunity. A new lender or a consortium of lenders emerges to provide Debtor in Possession funding to enable the company to stay upright while in bankruptcy. All vendors are asked to resume shipping based on the newly created surety of DIP financing.
But, lacking confidence that past due receivables will eventually be paid, many vendors resort to selling their company receivables to distressed debt (or vulture) investors for substantial discounted values. This, in my opinion, is a terrible flaw in the bankruptcy process in that unsecured vendors, who you would expect to have a stake in the company’s eventual successful emergence from bankruptcy, have now traded places with investors seeking a fast financial return.
Saks Global at Risk
If Sak’s Global were operating as a stable platform with a successful sales and margin track record, with capable senior leadership, a reliable operating strategy, and good relationships with its vendors and customers, there would be ample reason for the company to navigate through bankruptcy and emerge with new debt and a newly restructured balance sheet. But none of this appears to be the case. As 2026 unfolds to what will undoubtedly be a challenging year for all retailers, the prospects for Saks Global are truly grim. My sense is that many vendors long ago stopped shipping or have curtailed their support for Saks, Neiman Marcus and maybe even Bergdorf Goodman, and they are unlikely to get back on board after having been egregiously abused these past few years.
Many will find another retailer to serve their customers if they haven’t already done so or continue to build a direct-to-consumer model of their own. Why wouldn’t they? Who needs the sturm und drang of a failing retail partner who doesn’t pay its bills? If that happens, Saks Global is toast.
Her we are at New Years Eve 2025, I wonder what’s in store for 2026
A new CEO perhaps, the clear out of some dysfunctional management, Chapter 11 ?
Happy New Year !
Saks Global Enterprises, facing limited options ahead of a more than $100 million debt payment due at the end of this month, is considering Chapter 11 bankruptcy as a last resort, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
Xerox’s problem is brutally simple: more cash goes out than comes in. Every quarter.
The business isn’t generating enough cash to cover interest, restructuring, and working capital.
Why? Because Xerox is burning cash from operations. Not investing cash. Burning it.
To plug the gap, they’re selling patents and borrowing money using what’s left of their Intellectual Property as collateral, basically pawning the family silver to pay this month’s bills.
At the current pace, they’ve got maybe 6–9 months of runway if they keep pulling levers like asset sales and emergency loans; without those, it’s closer to 2–3 quarters.
Seeking a $500M IP-backed loan means unsecured financing is effectively closed (credit rating at CCC+ = markets price in a real risk of default).
This does NOT fix the business, it just buys time.
If cash doesn’t turn positive fast (not “less negative,” but actually positive), the only realistic outcomes are:
#1 More asset sales (DocuShare, XMPie, CareAR, etc)
#2 Forced recapitalization (debt converts to equity, shareholders wiped)
#3 Chapter 11 (court-supervised version of #2)
Everything else you hear is just nicer words around that math.
The endgame is no longer theoretical, it’s just a matter of timing.
https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/xerox-seeks-500-million-ipbacked-loan-to-boost-liquidity--wsj-93CH-4408966
I see posts on here all the time lamenting PE ownership, made without any understanding of how we got to this point, and how this goes all the way back to asinine decisions pre-bankruptcy in 2013. I’ve decided to play Cengage historian and lay some of this out for posterity, and so I can yell at the sky
2012–2013: Debt pile gets ugly
• Pre-bankruptcy: Before Chapter 11, Cengage was already doing financial engineering just to push out maturities — e.g., in 2012 it sold $725M of 11.5% senior secured notes due 2020 and amended its credit facilities to extend term loan and revolver maturities.
• July 2, 2013: Cengage files for Chapter 11 with about $5.8B of outstanding debt, announcing a “pre-arranged” restructuring to eliminate more than $4B of that.
Even before bankruptcy, they were in the classic LBO textbook-publisher trap: lots of high-coupon debt, some of it maturing in big lumps, and a business that’s not exactly a rocket ship.
2014: Emerges from Chapter 11… still leveraged
• April 1, 2014: Cengage officially emerges from Chapter 11. The plan cuts ~$4B of funded debt and brings in $1.75B of new Term Loan B financing, plus a $250M asset-based revolver, as exit financing.
• Post-reorg, they’re no longer at $5.8B of debt, but they do still have roughly ~$1.8–2B of funded debt sitting above a business doing around ~$2B of revenue at the time, still pretty leveraged.
That Term Loan B is key. By design, those loans usually have tiny quarterly amortization and then a big “bullet” (lump-sum) repayment at maturity. You drag a big principal balance for years, paying interest the whole time, then face a huge refinancing/repayment cliff at the end.
2014–2019: Term loan era, dividend recaps, and financial engineering
• In the years after emergence, Cengage spends a lot of time tweaking the capital structure: repricing the term loan, issuing additional term debt, and even doing share-repurchase and dividend recap transactions (they literally disclosed a “dividend recapitalization” in FY2015 current reports).
• if you’re still doing buybacks / dividends and refinancing loans rather than aggressively paying them down, you’re implicitly betting that refinancing the big bullet at the end of the term will be doable when you get there.
So by late 2010s you’ve got a company that did cut its original $5.8B anchor, but is still sitting on a large secured term loan and reliant on capital markets to roll that over when maturities and balloon payments come due.
2019–2020: Aborted McGraw-Hill merger, more uncertainty
• In 2019 Cengage announces a planned merger with McGraw-Hill and a related amendment to its senior secured credit facilities, again, capital structure is clearly front-and-center.
• The merger is ultimately called off in 2020 after regulatory issues, which leaves Cengage still independent, still carrying its own debt stack, and now without the scale/merger synergies that were supposed to help.
So by early 2020s, you’ve got: meaningful secured debt, a term-loan structure with big future maturities, and no merger “escape hatch.”
2021–2022: Rising rates + debt drag
• For FY22 (year ended March 31, 2022), Cengage reports adjusted cash revenue of about $1.37B and Adjusted Cash EBITDA less prepub of ~$326M.
• That’s a decent EBITDA number, but on top of a large term loan it still implies a non-trivial leverage ratio. As global rates move up and credit spreads widen (2022–2023), the cost of keeping that debt financed goes up, and the risk of refinancing a big bullet at attractive rates gets worse.
The company itself starts talking more about “financial flexibility” and de-leveraging in investor materials around this time… they know the balance sheet is constraining what they can do.
April 2023: Apollo preferred equity to prevent collapse
• April 17, 2023: Cengage announces that Apollo Funds will invest $500M into a new series of convertible preferred stock
• In the press release, Cengage explicitly says it will use the proceeds to “reduce outstanding debt and lower interest expense,” and to “increase financial flexibility” to invest in growth.
The old LBO-style debt and its balloon risk were getting harder and more expensive to carry in a higher-rate world. Rather than wait for a ugly refinancing fight when the big maturities hit, they sold a chunk of the company to Apollo via preferred equity, then used that cash to pay down loans and push the maturity wall further out.
2023–2025: PE priorities, “efficiency,” and repeated layoffs
Once Apollo is in, the priorities shift to the usual PE playbook:
• Sharpen the focus on EBITDA, cash flow and “portfolio mix
• Cuts, cuts, cuts
A classic pattern of a ZombieCo:
I am not saying CH11 is or is not imminent. But more actions are ahead. Some potentials:
Risk of Chapter 11 or sale
Given the above:
The heavy debt load (several billions) and relatively small cash cushion raise risk if business continues to decline or cash flow weakens.
A sale or restructuring becomes more likely if they cannot reverse margin declines, stabilise revenue, and free up meaningful cash flow.
If nothing materially changes, the company may find itself pressured within 12-18 months, but this is highly dependent on actual cash flows, debt covenants, market conditions, interest rates, etc.
A sale (or strategic merger) may be a more likely outcome than full Chapter 11 if assets/brand can still attract buyers and if management acts proactively.
I work at Spirit and I don’t know what to think anymore. The company just got court approval for $475 million in financing to keep things running during bankruptcy, but everyone here knows what that really means. Chapter 11 sounds like a plan to reorganize, but for the people doing the day-to-day work, it usually means job cuts, unpaid overtime, and endless waiting for answers that never come.
Management keeps saying operations will continue as normal, but that's not helping morale. Some teams are already being told to cut spending and delay projects, and everyone’s whispering about more potential furloughs. I’ve seen this kind of thing before in other airlines, and it always starts with a few quiet layoffs before the bigger rounds hit. I really hope they handle this the right way, but most of us are just bracing ourselves and hoping to survive the next few months.
The quarter is looking so rough and it’s hard to imagine 2025 closing above $10 a share. By mid-2026 exits from both institutional investors and larger accounts can only speed up, meaning the stock will see under $8 and more like the upper fives by end of 2026. The second half of 2026 will very likely be brutal on the layoffs front, we will see daily scrambles to cut costs and preserve every single cent. Some of CES’s best bits will probably cheaply end up in the hands of third-tier and fourth-tier competitors just to raise cash. Then comes 2027 and a Chapter 11 filing will look much less like a possibility and more like a certainty. Honestly Rawul should already be on the phone with a seasoned bankruptcy lawyer.
For short sellers out there the momentum is on your side.
If Intel weren’t as massive as it is and didn’t have its long history propping it up, it would’ve been looking at Chapter 11 or even Chapter 7 a long time ago.