And, then there is Neiman Marcus, the 112-year old purveyor of both amazing luxury goods and extraordinary luxury service. The Neiman Marcus Christmas Catalogue featured astonishing, envy-producing, sometime s outlandish items worth well into five figures. In the span of eight years, Neiman Marcus endured two separate buyouts saddling the brand with enormous debt. In 2005, Warburg Pincus and TPG bought the brand for around $5.1 billion only to sell it to Ares Management and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board in 2013 for $6 billion. The result is that right now Neiman Marcus carries $5.5 billion in debt and just entered Chapter 11. Neiman's CEO stated that the bankruptcy would allow the brand to begin eliminating at least $4 billion of its outstanding debt. He said that addressing the "massive interest payments" was going well until the coronavirus pandemic. In the meantime, the fate of 13,200 employees is hanging in the balance.