Saks Fifth Avenue History: The Name Stays, the Owner Changes

On June 26, 2026, the company that owns Saks Fifth Avenue walked out of a Texas bankruptcy court with a new name: Exemplar Luxury Group. Its creditors now own it. Its debt is down by nearly three quarters. We covered what the reset means for Neiman Marcus, Saks and Bergdorf Goodman when it happened. This piece looks further back, because the striking thing about Saks is not that it went bankrupt. It is how many times the name above the door has survived the company behind it.

1867 to 1923: a family business

Saks began in 1867 in Washington, D.C., where Andrew Saks and his brother Isadore opened A. Saks & Co. In 1902 the business moved into New York with a large store at Herald Square, on 34th Street and Broadway. When Andrew died in 1912, his son Horace took over. For its first half century, Saks was what most American department stores were then: a family name, run by the family.

1923 to 1990: a subsidiary, then a tobacco asset

In 1923 Saks merged with Gimbel Brothers, the chain run by Bernard Gimbel, Horace's cousin. A year later the Fifth Avenue store opened, and the address became the brand. Saks ran as an autonomous subsidiary, and after Horace's death in 1926 Adam Gimbel became its president.

In 1973 Brown & Williamson, the American arm of British American Tobacco, bought the whole Gimbels chain. The tobacco group later grouped its stores under a retail division, BATUS. Then it made the decision that explains much of what followed: in 1986 it chose to close Gimbels, the parent, judged a marginal performer, and keep Saks. The last Gimbels stores shut in 1987. The subsidiary had outlived its owner.

1990 to 2013: financiers, and a buyer that took the name

In 1990 BATUS sold Saks to the investment firm Investcorp, a deal reported at $1.5 billion. The same year, Saks launched Off 5th, its outlet business. In 1998 a regional department store group, Proffitt's, bought Saks Holdings in a stock deal valued at about $2.14 billion. Then it renamed itself Saks Incorporated. The acquirer adopted the name of the company it had acquired, because the name was worth more than its own.

2013 to 2026: the real estate bet

The modern chapter belongs to Richard Baker, a real estate investor who built a retail group on a simple thesis: department stores sit on valuable property. With his firm NRDC he bought Lord & Taylor from Federated for $1.2 billion, then the Canadian retailer Hudson's Bay in 2008. In 2013 Hudson's Bay agreed to buy Saks for $2.9 billion. The Fifth Avenue flagship alone was then valued at between $800 million and more than $1 billion.

In December 2024 the group combined Saks with Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, a $2.7 billion acquisition financed largely with debt, under a new holding company, Saks Global. It did not hold. As cash ran short, vendors stopped shipping. On December 31, 2025, Saks Global missed a $100 million bond payment. On January 13, 2026, with more than $3.4 billion of debt, it filed for Chapter 11. Baker, who had taken the chief executive role on January 2, left it within two weeks. Six months later the lenders owned the company, and roughly 170 locations had become about 50.

Why America's great stores keep coming back

Saks is not an exception. It is the pattern. B. Altman, on Fifth Avenue since 1906, filed for bankruptcy in 1989 and closed. Macy's, loaded with debt from a 1986 management buyout, filed in January 1992 and merged with Federated in 1994. Barneys New York filed in August 2019, was sold for $270 million to a licensing group, closed its stores in February 2020 and lived on as a name licensed to Saks. Neiman Marcus filed in May 2020 and erased $4 billion of its $5.1 billion debt. Lord & Taylor, founded in 1826, was sold by Hudson's Bay in 2019 and filed in August 2020. Hudson's Bay itself, founded in 1670, closed its last stores on June 1, 2025.

Three things explain the cycle. These businesses are bought for their property and their names, which lend well, so each new owner arrives carrying debt. American bankruptcy law is built to save a business rather than bury it: Chapter 11 hands the company to its creditors, cuts the debt and lets the doors stay open. And the names are the one asset that never depreciates. A buyer can renegotiate a lease, close a store or change the holding company. Nobody has found a reason to stop calling it Saks.

What it means for the people on the floor

For anyone working in luxury retail, the lesson is practical. The name on your business card has outlived every owner it has had, and so will your client book. The company behind the name is the part to check. Before you accept an offer from a department store, ask who owns it, how much it owes and whether the brands are shipping on time. A client advisor on an empty floor cannot sell. The roles that keep their value through every restructuring are the ones closest to the client: store leaders who hold a team together through a change of ownership, and senior sales professionals whose clients follow them. Our salary guide shows what those roles pay in New York and beyond, and current openings are on our jobs board.

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