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Good morning.<\/strong> The current travails of Saks Global, the one-year old holding company of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, are a timely reminder that the key to success in business is often quite simple: focus on your core business, not on financial engineering.<\/p>\n In late 2024, Saks Global executive chair and controlling shareholder Richard Baker, a real estate scion, landed his dream trophy in Neiman Marcus (which also owned Bergdorf), achieving his long-held ambition to combine the U.S.\u2019s fanciest luxury department stores into one company. To pull this off, Saks Global borrowed $2.7 billion, an untenable debt load that has put the company on the precipice of a bankruptcy protection filing, or at least a major refinancing. (No one thinks Saks Global is going under, but this can only hurt its prospects as a retailer.)<\/p>\n The Saks-Neiman tie-up was the culmination of a plan Baker hatched in 2005 to snap up retailers with valuable real estate. Over the years, different iterations of the company, known for years as HBC, have included Lord & Taylor (his first big acquisition), and Canada\u2019s Hudson\u2019s Bay.<\/p>\n His bet was that the value of iconic properties like the Saks and Lord & Taylor flagships in Manhattan or The Bay in Toronto could be monetized so long as the underlying retail business remained steady.<\/p>\n But nothing about retail, especially department stores, has been stable. Lord & Taylor shut all its stores in 2019 after HBC sold the weakened retailer, and Hudson\u2019s Bay in Canada liquidated last year, ending its 355-year run.<\/p>\n To be fair, Baker has made some good deals in the world of retail. (He sold Target the locations of its ill-fated Canadian expansion in 2011.) And department stores have been cratering for decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n But a constant churn of financial maneuvers (spinning off Saks\u2019 e-commerce, creating co-working spaces in underutilized stores, all while being highly leveraged) brought some benefit but never obviated the need to invest more in basics. Saks Global has said it\u2019s poured tons of money into its retailers, but it has not been enough. Its cash crunch has led some vendors to stop shipping to Saks: it\u2019s very hard to sell merchandise you don\u2019t have, ergo a 13% drop in sales last quarter.<\/p>\n A few months ago, I chronicled the comebacks at Macy\u2019s, Bloomingdale\u2019s, Nordstrom (all benefiting from Saks\u2019 problems) alongside the consistent performance of Belk and Dillard\u2019s. Such retailers have improved customer service, renovated stores, and stocked ample and new merchandise. A strong business boosts the value of their underlying real estate.<\/p>\n All that will be key for Baker to consider since he\u2019s just become the new CEO of Saks Global, giving him a direct hand in running the company, not just yanking its financial levers. You can read my full story on the Saks saga here.<\/p>\n Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com<\/em><\/p>\n How to get Venezuela\u2019s oil\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n One big question that looms over the Trump administration is how to obtain and monetize Venezuela\u2019s oil, which the White House said it will control \u201cindefinitely.\u201d It\u2019s reportedly <\/span>considering exerting some control over state-owned producer Petr\u00f3leos de Venezuela SA<\/span>. Meanwhile, <\/span>the U.S. oil industry is asking for legal and financial guarantees<\/span> from Washington before it assumes the risk of investing in Venezuela. Trump <\/span>has suggested<\/span> that the U.S. may end up reimbursing oil companies for rebuilding Venezuela\u2019s infrastructure.<\/span><\/p>\n ICE shooting sparks outrage<\/b><\/p>\n Video of an ICE agent <\/span>shooting and killing a woman<\/span> during an encounter in Minnesota spread rapidly online Wednesday. The incident stoked national tensions over the Trump administration\u2019s immigration raids and sparked protests as far away as New York City.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n JPMorgan\u2019s proxy platform<\/b><\/p>\n JPMorgan\u2019s asset management unit, one of the world\u2019s largest with more than $7 trillion in client assets, <\/span>is ditching proxy-advisory firms<\/span> in favor of an internal AI-enabled platform called Proxy IQ that will help cast votes on shareholder resolutions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Trump goes after big single-family home investors<\/b><\/p>\n In a post on Truth Social Wednesday, President Trump <\/span>suggested that he will ban<\/span> institutional investors and Wall Street firms from buying single-family homes as young people are finding it harder and harder to purchase homes. Analysts say the biggest investors in the space collectively own hundreds of thousands of homes.<\/span><\/p>\n Accessing Greenland\u2019s minerals could take decades\u2014and billions<\/b><\/p>\n Alexander Gray, who worked in President Trump\u2019s first administration, recently told <\/span>Fortune<\/span><\/i> that the president\u2019s threats to take over Greenland should be taken very seriously. Mineral experts, on the other hand, say that <\/span>targeting the island\u2019s natural resources<\/span> will take billions of dollars across decades to see any return.<\/span><\/p>\n The great private equity consolidation<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Nearly half of all U.S. private equity capital raised last year through September<\/span> went to the top 10 funds<\/span>, their largest share in a decade, as institutional investors favor the top managers amid weak distributions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Are layoffs really because of AI?<\/b><\/p>\n A new report from Oxford Economics suggests that companies aren\u2019t laying off workers and replacing them with AI, instead <\/span>using the technology as a cover for standard headcount reductions<\/span>. \u201cWe suspect some firms are trying to dress up layoffs as a good news story rather than bad news, such as past over-hiring,\u201d the authors of the report wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n S&P 500 futures<\/b> were down 0.2% this morning. The last session closed down 0.34%. <\/span>STOXX Europe 600<\/b> was down 0.3% in early trading. The U.K.\u2019s <\/span>FTSE 100<\/b> was down 0.33% in early trading. Japan\u2019s <\/span>Nikkei 225 <\/b>was down 1.63%. China\u2019s <\/span>CSI 300<\/b> was down o.82%. The South Korea<\/span> KOSPI<\/b> was flat. India\u2019s <\/span>NIFTY 50<\/b> was down 1.01%. <\/span>Bitcoin<\/b> was down to $90K.<\/span><\/p>\n The $38 trillion national debt is one thing 82% of Americans agree on: \u2018Voters are understandably concerned,\u2019 watchdog says<\/span> by Nick Lichtenberg<\/span><\/p>\n Jensen Huang might be fine with a billionaires tax, but Google cofounder Larry Page is already dumping California<\/span> by Sasha Rogelberg<\/span><\/p>\n OpenAI launches ChatGPT Health in a push to become a hub for personal health data<\/span> by Sharon Goldman<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018It feels challenging to break through\u2019: Most recruiters say they can\u2019t find talent while 80% of job seekers feel unprepared to find a job<\/span> by Jacqueline Munis<\/span><\/p>\n Netflix co-CEO says he doesn\u2019t read business books\u2014instead, he reads one 1902 novella about a ship and its captain \u2018over and over again\u2019<\/span> by Preston Fore<\/span><\/p>\n CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams, Claire Zillman and Lee Clifford.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Saks #Globals #bankruptcy #result #risky #dealmakingand #neglect #business #basics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Good morning. The current trav… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[4432,4613,266,451,7818,7816,7819,7817,2347,7815],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10467"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\nTop news<\/h3>\n
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