Riding to the rescue can be lucrative work.
Witness Geoffroy van Raemdonck, who scored an $8.5 million sign-on payment and a base salary of $1.5 million when he stepped in to become chief executive officer just before Saks Global filed for Chapter 11 in January.
The CEO’s pay package was revealed in bankruptcy court filings, which are starting to pull back the veil on the nitty-gritty details of the company’s operations.
Saks Global submitted the employment contracts for van Raemdonck as well as some of his key lieutenants for court approval this week, in accordance with the usual bankruptcy process.
Van Raemdonck could also receive a bonus with a target of nearly $2.3 million and a separate “key employee” incentive payment targeted at $1.5 million, although Saks Global is not asking the judge to sign off on those incentive programs yet.
But retail is a team sport and van Raemdonck advocated to also bring on former Bergdorf Goodman president Darcy Penick as president and chief commercial officer, and Neiman’s former president and merchandising lead Lana Todorovich as chief of global brand partnerships
Together with Brandy Richardson, who joined Saks Global as chief financial officer in August, that put four Neiman’s veterans at the top of the retailer’s org chart.
Penick and Todorovich each received pay packages including a base salary of $825,000 and sign-on bonuses of $2.5 million. Richardson’s salary was also set at $825,000, but she received a retention bonus of $3 million.
Executive pay is always a touchy subject. While critics argue corporate leaders take too big a piece of the pie for themselves, others see a marketplace for executive talent with star players being compensated to work their magic, similar to the dynamic in professional sports.
Regardless, retail CEOs often receive multimillion-dollar packages. In WWD’s tally last year of highest-paid industry executives VF Corp.’s Bracken Darrell ranked as number 25 with a pay package valued at $10.7 million, including $6.7 million in stock and option awards.
Saks Global’s former leadership also saw significant compensation packages over the past year as the company struggled to bring together Neiman Marcus Group and Saks Fifth Avenue into a workable business — even as scores of vendors went unpaid.
In 2025 and early 2026, Marc Metrick, former CEO, was paid a total of $8 million, including $2.5 million in severance and retention bonuses of $625,000 in both October and July as well as a $2.5 million retention bonus paid in January last year. Richard Baker, former executive chairman and CEO for a short while in January, received payments totaling $2.3 million in 2025 and 2026, including $490,277 in loan forgiveness as well as salary, travel allowances and car allowances.
The court papers also gave some of the thinking behind the decision to hire van Raemdonck, who ran Neiman Marcus Group from 2018 until late 2024, when Saks Global bought the retailer in a $2.7 billion deal that ultimately saddled it with too much debt and sank the ship.
The decision to bring on van Raemdonck came together as the company was negotiating with bondholders for a $1.75 billion financing package to see it through bankruptcy.
“All parties recognized the critical need for a seasoned management team capable of restoring the company … to financial health and operational stability,” according to a declaration by Paul Aronzon, a member of a special committee of parent company HBC GP’s board of managers. “I believed that changes to the leadership team were necessary to maximize the global debtors’ chances at a successful reorganization.”
Aronzon said van Raemdonck’s “experience also spoke for itself.”
“Mr. van Raemdonck transformed Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman’s collective business strategy from that of a traditional department store into relationship-driven luxury business,” he said. “The special committee determined that appointing Mr. van Raemdonck as chief executive officer was in the global debtors’ best interests, and that he was the ideal chief executive officer to lead the global debtors through their reorganization.”
Over the past two months, Aronzon said: “My faith and trust in the executives has only grown. The executives played a central role in the global debtors’ successful efforts to achieve consensus on final approval of the DIP facilities. The executives have also been critical in managing and stabilizing the global debtors’ brand relationships through the early stages of these Chapter 11 cases. They have leveraged their unique combination of expertise, experience and collaborative leadership to guide the global debtors’ smooth transition into these Chapter 11 cases and will continue to play key roles in rightsizing the Global Debtors’ businesses by working with brands, building up inventory, creating a strong sales associate team, streamlining operations, and attracting and retaining target customers.”
