The luxury giant needs a cash infusion to pay off a slew of debts that include a $100 million interest payment to bondholders that came due earlier this week. The company also owes millions to vendors, many of whom have not been paid in full for more than a year.

Saks is now in discussions with investors for a massive cash injection to stave off a possible bankruptcy filing, a source with knowledge of the situation told The Post. If those talks fail, the capital could take the form of debtor-in-possession financing in a Chapter 11 reorganization, the source said.

Marc Metrick stepped down as CEO of Saks Global. WWD via Getty Images

“The discussions will likely wrap up within a couple of weeks,” this source said. “It’s not resolved yet.” 

Reports of a possible bankruptcy ramped up this week after the luxury retailer missed an interest payment to bondholders on Tuesday for the $2.7 billion it borrowed to acquire Neiman Marcus a year ago.

Saks Global appears to have bought itself a 30-day grace period for the interest payment, according to RetailStat, which provides credit data and analysis on retailers.

Meanwhile, Saks Global announced on Friday that CEO Marc Metrick is stepping down after a decade at the helm.

Executive chairman, Richard Baker, succeeded Metrick as CEO. Saks Global

“After nearly three decades with Saks, I will be stepping down as chief executive officer,” Metrick said in a statement. “From building a world-class team to establishing Saks.com as a leading luxury e-commerce platform, I am proud of what we accomplished.”

He is succeeded by the company’s executive chairman, Richard Baker, a real estate mogul who was previously CEO before the Neiman Marcus acquisition.

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The company said Metrick, who led Saks Fifth Avenue since 2015, is leaving to “pursue new opportunities.”

Saks Global’s revenues, which include Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Off 5th, dropped 13% in the company’s most recent quarter, which ended Aug. 2.

Saks Global has vast real estate holdings, which it has begun to leverage to raise capital. Bloomberg via Getty Images

In May, the company closed a Saks Fifth Avenue store in San Francisco. This week, it sold the land beneath its Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus shop to Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp. for an undisclosed amount. The store now has a long-term lease with the New York-based Ashkenazy.

In June, Saks Global said it raised $600 million in fresh capital from bondholders. It has also sought to sell a minority stake in Bergdorf to raise more funds.

The merger with Nieman Marcus coincided with a slump in demand for luxury goods.

Saks Fifth Avenue fell behind on its payments to vendors. DW labs Incorporated – stock.adobe.com

There have been several rounds of layoffs this year at the company, which operates more than 70 department stores and is the largest luxury retailer in the world.

“Marc has been a valued leader at Saks for many years, helping to drive significant transformation and growth while solidifying the company’s enduring position in luxury,” Baker said in statement. “We thank Marc for his leadership and dedication and wish him continued success in his next chapter.”

The post Exclusive | Saks owner races to raise $1B in financing as CEO steps down: sources appeared first on Our Story Insight.

President Trump just came to the rescue of the $60 billion industry, putting the drug in a low-level federal category in which dispensaries, farms and various weed-related products said they could finally get “banked,” or have access to banking services long denied weed entrepreneurs.

Or so they thought.

The Post has learned that the initial reaction to the Trump executive order (EO) lowering weed to among the lowest level of controlled substances — at least among big banks like JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citigroup — hasn’t been a good one for the pot business.

Sorry, weed banking isn’t coming to the nearest JPMorgan branch near you, because Trump’s order simply doesn’t allow it.

It’s not like the banks don’t want the business, I am told.

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Executives running all three of these places aren’t potheads (though the image of Jamie Dimon smoking a joint would be hysterical).

Banking, like politics, is a business of addition and bankers thought they were about to welcome scores of new customers into their branches as speculation grew around Trump’s executive order.

When it hit on Dec. 18, in-house bank lawyers spent days reading every clause backwards, forwards and upside down, trying to find some clause or wording that would allow them to fully bank the cannabis industry.

They came up with nothing, I am told by sources at these institutions.

The specific language of the EO renders the vast majority of pot banking still illegal at the federal level, which is where the big banks get regulated.

“I can tell you that a battalion of lawyers at every major bank looked at the EO and we all came away with the same conclusion: It was written not broadly but mainly just for medical use, which makes banking this industry next to impossible,” said a senior executive at a major bank.

Far beyond med use

The issue for the banks is that most of Pot Inc. goes far beyond medical research or even prescriptions for weed-related pain-relief products that the EO suggests are now legal — or at least no longer a “Schedule-1” drug like heroin, but a “Schedule-3” drug like Tylenol with codeine.

Pot farms, for instance, could service medical usage, but they also service — probably in much larger volume — the business of supplying smokable stuff to the pothead community.

Based on the banks’ reading of the EO, that remains outside the boundaries of banking law.

If you’re confused by the legal stuff, you’re not alone.

Doesn’t reclassification away from heroin make pot legal?

Well, yes and no.

It’s still a controlled substance like anabolic steroids, according to the feds.

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And yes, pot has been legalized or decriminalized in nearly every state; no one gets busted for smoking a joint anymore, which is all too obvious to New Yorkers (like myself) who are tired of the stench of pot every time you walk down the street.

But those are state laws that don’t impact banks.

While the state-by-state legalization of pot has mainstreamed weed as a business, its growth has been stymied because big US banks still won’t lend to these businesses or provide them with credit card services; pot companies need to go to Canada to float stock or get financing from costly non-bank sources.

That’s because our banks are regulated by the Federal Reserve, and federal law — even after the reclassification — remains a banking roadblock, bank executives say.

This position will certainly draw some blowback from some of the leaders of Pot Inc. who had been lobbying the White House for a change in weed’s classification status.

One is former hedge fund trader Marc Cohodes, who’s now one of the pot industry’s leading advocates.

He has met with White House officials including people at the Treasury Department for the past year.

He says the big banks are misreading the intent of the executive order, how Trump wants pot companies to do banking here in the US as opposed to Canada, and how medical usage shouldn’t be debanked just because some pot from a grower makes its way to a dude smoking a joint.

He compares the debanking of Pot Inc. to what happened with crypto before Trump began to deregulate that business, and how big banks debanked conservative-leaning businesses like guns — and even Trump himself, whose businesses were denied banking services after he left office following his first term.

‘Huge market’

“Medical is a huge market and recreation is approved in 41 states,” Cohodes tells me.

“Canadian stocks can trade in the US, but the fact that US cannabis companies can only trade in Canada drives the Trump people crazy.”

The banks, meanwhile, say they’re not trying to deny Pot Inc. anything; they’re just looking to avoid getting caught in a regulatory quagmire.

What they’re hoping for is more clarity, like federal legislation that specifically allows banking services to the weed business.

“Without that, every time we make a loan to a pot grower, we will have to file a suspicious activity report,” the banking executive said.

The post Financing the cannabis business is not as easy as the banking industry appeared first on Our Story Insight.