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The mood cloaking Saks Global has somewhat lightened up as vendors previously unpaid begin to receive payments for orders shipped. But for Saks it's still a process of rebuilding trust with the market.

It’s almost like vendors and Saks Global have called a truce — whether it’s temporary or permanent remains to be seen, depending on how business progresses.

For the most part speaking on the condition they remain anonymous, small and medium-sized vendors in the U.S. and abroad told WWD that after months or a year or more of not being paid, Saks Global has within the last few weeks started paying for orders shipped. Larger designer brands and fashion conglomerates have consistently been paid.

Saks Global Hits 'Turning Point,' According to CEO Marc Metrick

“I am a little surprised. Last week I got a payment, I wasn’t expecting it,” said one executive from a midsized sportswear company, who was interviewed last week. “Banks are coming in to see me, if they approve the shipments, that would be heaven for me. I feel good that [Saks Global] is paying us, but I also feel I am taking some risk, and trying to forget feeling like the ‘abused wife.’ With banks’ approval of shipments, it would be business as usual with Saks Global. But without getting factored, I would have to put a cap on the amount of my exposure. It’s about doing what you feel comfortable with.”

A representative at one designer company said his company started to receive payments in May for orders that had been shipped in January. None of this company’s bills from 2024 have been paid. But Saks officials have said that it will pay past due bills to its vendors — amounting to about $275 million in total — in monthly installments beginning in July, with outstanding balances projected to be paid in full by the second quarter of 2026.

For now Saks is delivering on its promise to pay vendors 90 days after receipt of goods. Vendors are being paid on a rolling basis, depending on when their merchandise was received, so some are still anxiously awaiting payments. Vendors remain angered by the 90-day schedule, and said it’s practically unheard of in the industry, except during the pandemic when payments were extended.

Along with the commitment to paying vendors, at the end of this month Saks must make its first $120 million interest payment on the $2.2 billion in bonds it sold to buy the Neiman Marcus Group for $2.7 billion last December.

But Saks Global chief executive officer Marc Metrick at the end of May said the company has secured financing commitments to build about $700 million in liquidity. “Along with synergy realization and business performance exceeding our plans, we are well positioned to continue delivering for all of our stakeholders, including our brand partners,” he said, providing assurances to vendors.

On Wednesday, a Saks spokesperson said in a statement to WWD, “We are successfully executing against our previously announced new payment terms. The vast majority of our brand partners have worked with us on our new payment terms, and in addressing any past due balances. Payments are made on a weekly basis and we are focused on building lasting and durable brand partner relationships, enabling their businesses to grow alongside ours.

“With the terms outlined in February, we are setting a new working capital model, more closely aligning payments to our brands to the revenue coming from our customers. This enables us to invest in supporting the growth of the brands through marketing and the personalization work we already have well underway. We estimate that the change in payment terms will drive an incremental net $200 million in working capital efficiency that will be used to support brand partner sales growth,” the spokesperson added.

The spokesperson also indicated that the strategy at Saks Global involves “resetting the business model, reinventing the luxury shopping experience, scaling personalization, unlocking alternative revenue streams, and realizing synergies….We have already made meaningful progress as evidenced by our improving inventory flows, the launch of exciting strategic partnerships like Saks on Amazon Luxury Stores, and the acceleration of our synergy targets.”

Even More Synergies

The spokesperson indicated that Saks Global is “on track to achieve $600 million in synergies over the next five years, reflecting an additional $100 million versus our original target. We expect to realize almost half of that, or over $285 million in run-rate synergies, by the end of fiscal 2025, which is nearly double our original target.”

While clearly relieved that Saks has begun to pay for their orders, vendors need more. They want greater clarity on the game plan for the future — how Saks and Neiman’s are integrating, how the two retailers could differentiate in the context of luxury, whether store closings are in the cards, specifically where Saks and Neiman’s operate in the same markets or malls. Saks and Neiman’s are in eight markets together.

Vendors also voiced concerns about the loss of Saks Global management through consolidating Saks and Neiman’s, and want to know when Saks Global will start to re-animate stores with events and activations. That’s something Neiman’s had been aggressive with through dozens of vendor collaborations that occurred pre-acquisition. Two sources cited Saks’ cancellation of the 2024 holiday laser-light/fireworks extravaganza at the Fifth Avenue flagship as a red flag. One source close to Saks said it cost at least $2 million to stage the holiday display, for the fireworks, light technology, and performers which in past years featured Elton John, Idina Menzel and the Radio City Rockettes.

Saks Global hasn’t been totally devoid of events for its best customers, having hosted at Bergdorf Goodman a cocktail reception to celebrate Valentino Garavani’s “Ses Folies” collection, several jewelry pop-ups with luxury brands at Bergdorf’s and Neiman Marcus stores, and bringing top clients to experience the Cannes Film Festival, among other activities.

“I am concerned that a lot of the leadership is gone,” said the midsized vendor who started seeing some bills paid. “They seem to keep laying off people, for sure with the back offices of Neiman Marcus. And there’s a whole new buying team,” one that’s buying for both Saks and Neiman’s. “I am less pessimistic than I was a month ago, but I wouldn’t say I am overly optimistic either.”

Aware of the concerns, Emily Essner, president and chief commercial officer of Saks Global, and Paolo Riva, chief brand partnerships and buying officer, reporting to Essner, will give a presentation on June 18 to an audience of vendors at the Pitti Immagine Uomo menswear trade show being held in Florence from June 17 to 20. Two other Saks Global officials, Joo Woo, the senior vice president, brand partnerships and buying for men’s, and Bruce Pask, senior director of men’s fashion, will also address the audience. Vendors expect to learn a lot, and receive more assurances. Riva did meet with certain vendors at JCK in Las Vegas, the biggest trade show for jewelry, which was held June 6 to 9.

“They’re lucky they have Paolo on their team,” said the source close to Saks. Before the acquisition, Riva was general manager of brand partnerships and merchandising at NMG.

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Voyager is working with companies including Airbus, Mitsubishi Corp., MDA Space and Palantir on the Starlab space station

Key Points

Shares of space- and defense-technology company Voyager Technologies climbed in their New York Stock Exchange debut, another sign of an improving market for initial public offerings.

Voyager said Tuesday that it was selling 12.35 million Class A shares priced at $31 each. It had expected to sell 11 million shares at a price of $26 to $29 each.

Voyager is working with companies including Airbus, Mitsubishi Corp., MDA Space and Palantir on the Starlab space station planned for low-Earth orbit. It intends to operate Starlab through a Voyager-led and majority-owned joint venture.

Starlab is intended to be the successor to the International Space Station.

Voyager stock ended Wednesday’s regular session at $56.48 and was up 7.1% after hours, to $60.50.

As an additional marker of the IPO environment, fintech Chime Financial’s initial offering priced above its expected range after hours Wednesday.

The 32 million-share offering priced at $27 each, compared with an expected range of $24 to $26 a share.

After a stock selloff linked to tariff concerns earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported April 4 that ticketing marketplace StubHub and buy-now-pay-later company Klarna were postponing IPO roadshows.

Since then, there have been recent signs of IPO success, including a blockbuster debut for crypto firm Circle Internet Group, and upsized offerings from Aspen Insurance, trading platform eToro Group and multiple special-purpose acquisition companies.

Circle Internet Group closed up 11%, at $117.20, on Wednesday, compared with its $31 IPO price.

EToro’s IPO priced at $52 and the stock closed down 6%, at $62.96. Meanwhile, Aspen Insurance rose 1.3%, to $32.25, compared with its $30 IPO price.

IPOs in recent weeks include virtual physical-therapy company Hinge Health, whose shares closed down 3.9%, to $35.16, compared with a $32 IPO price. MNTN, a software platform for connected TV advertising, declined 5.9%, to $19.97, Wednesday, after its May IPO priced at $16.

U.S.-China talks on trade resemble arms-control negotiations, with export controls the key weapons in each side’s arsenal

Key Points

SINGAPORE—A key lesson from the latest skirmish in the U.S.-China trade war: The era of weaponized supply chains has arrived.

Earlier this week, Washington and Beijing ended a standoff involving the most potent new tool in superpower statecraft—export controls. As part of a monthslong trade fight, the two sides choked off the supply of such exports as rare earths or semiconductor technology in a bid to gain an edge.

So when Chinese and American negotiators finally met in London to discuss a truce, the talk focused far more on dialing back supply-chain curbs than they did on tariffs, market access and other standard trade-negotiation topics.

That shift highlights how the rivalry between the U.S. and China is increasingly about who controls the levers of global economic power. For businesses and investors, the potential for these tools to be used more broadly in the pursuit of geopolitical goals by Washington and Beijing adds another layer of complexity to an economic backdrop already clouded by tariffs.

“The amount of uncertainty generated by this is significant,” said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, senior adviser at the Conference Board in Beijing. “It is something new.”

To some analysts, the use of export controls means future trade talks between the U.S. and China will increasingly resemble the arms-control dialogues of the Cold War, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union worked to limit the buildup of nuclear weapons, without giving up the deterrent effect their possession conferred.

Today, instead of warheads, the U.S. and China are wielding a range of new economic weapons that have the potential to cause widespread economic pain. Following the latest skirmish, China agreed to resume exports of rare-earth magnets and critical minerals needed by U.S. companies—but only for six months, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“If you look at traditional arms-control treaties, the primary goal was to prevent a catastrophic, worst-case scenario from materializing,” said Emily Benson, head of strategy at the advisory firm Minerva Technology Futures and a former Commerce Department official. “And that’s certainly what we see here in the economic domain.”

In many essential sectors of the modern economy, China has the upper hand. The world’s second-largest economy accounts for around a third of global manufacturing output, giving it a potential chokehold on auto parts, basic ingredients for drugs, key parts of the electronics supply chain and a host of other industrial sectors. It is the world’s No. 1 exporter of machinery, ships, steel, ceramics, textiles and dozens of other goods, according to data from the International Trade Center, a U.N.-backed agency that promotes open trade.

The U.S. dominates fewer sectors—but its clout in advanced technology gives it an outsize advantage.

Supply-chain resilience became a hot topic in government buildings and corporate boardrooms during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the virus and the lockdowns aimed at containing it revealed the global economy’s vulnerability to major disruptions, especially in China, the world’s largest factory floor.

Auto factories in Missouri shut down in 2021 over a shortage of Chinese-made chips. European Union solidarity crumbled as individual countries raced to secure their own domestic supplies of ventilators, masks and other equipment.

Companies examined their supply chains to check for weak spots and in many cases opted to build up inventory, find additional manufacturing bases and take other steps to build greater resilience in their supply chains in the event of fresh disruption. These efforts did little to weaken China’s grip on key supply chains.

The pandemic also underlined the potential for governments to turn their economic dominance against their rivals and adversaries.

Under the Biden administration, the U.S., which for years made abundant use of its dominant position in global finance to impose sanctions on countries including Iran and Russia, wielded one of the most powerful economic tools America possesses: its tech prowess. Washington tightened controls on exports of high-end semiconductors to China, and persuaded allies including Japan and the Netherlands to limit supplies to China of lithography machines and other essential chip-making tools. The goal was to thwart China’s ambition to supplant the U.S. as the world’s foremost technological power.

In response, China has begun flexing its own economic muscle by tightly controlling the export of rare earths and other critical minerals that are essential for the manufacture of car engines, chips, smartphones and a host of other advanced technologies. It upped the ante this year by extending those controls to the export of rare-earth magnets, indispensable components in everything from air-conditioning units to jet fighters.

The U.S. said China agreed to speed approvals of magnet exports as part of a trade truce agreed in Geneva in May, which lowered substantially tariffs imposed by both countries on the other’s imports.

Yet Washington soon grew frustrated at the slow pace of approvals, which automakers complained was hurting production. Officials again reached for export controls to raise the pressure on Beijing, notifying companies that exports to China of jet engines and related parts, chip-making software, and ethane, a component of natural gas used in manufacturing plastics, were suspended, The Wall Street Journal reported.

This week’s talks in London were aimed at easing this standoff. The two sides said they agreed to “a framework” to restore the May truce, without providing many details. President Trump in a post on his Truth Social network said Wednesday that a deal is done and that the supply of magnets and rare earths from China to the U.S. economy will resume.

But China’s move to put a six-month limit on rare-earth export licenses for American manufacturers signals that Beijing could use this weapon against the U.S. if trade tensions erupt again.

The potential for export controls to disrupt trade adds to the pressure on companies already struggling to navigate tariffs and mushrooming trade conflicts. Companies operating in the U.S. and China will increasingly need to split their supply chains into two, said Eric Zheng, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

“Companies will, generally speaking, continue to derisk, however you define this, essentially by treating the U.S. and China as two separate markets,” he said.