Saks’ New CEO Brings Bankruptcy Know-How, Luxury Ties

For a taste of just how volatile the world of US luxury retail has been in the past few years, look no further than the resume of Geoffroy van Raemdonck.

Van Raemdonck was named as the new chief executive officer of Saks Global Enterprises on Wednesday as part of the retailer’s Chapter 11 filing. Just over a year after leaving the top job at Neiman Marcus, when Saks bought the famed department store in a debt-fuelled $2.65 billion deal, he’s returning with a remit to shepherd the combined company through bankruptcy and, once it emerges, make its portfolio of luxury department stores profitable.

Saks’ bondholders, who are providing $1.5 billion in bankruptcy financing to the company, think van Raemdonck can do that — partly because he’s done it before. The 53-year-old retail veteran, who was born in Brussels, Belgium, had been head of the Neiman Marcus Group for about two years when it declared bankruptcy in 2020, pushed over the edge by store closures during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Van Raemdonck stayed on and oversaw Neiman’s emergence from bankruptcy, spurred on by a post-pandemic boom in luxury spending.

Saks’ creditors also pushed for van Raemdonck to take the helm because they think he has a good relationship with luxury brands, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations. They’re betting he will be able to make peace with the world’s top fashion labels, which are owed hundreds of millions of dollars in back payments by Saks.

He currently sits on the board of Moncler SpA alongside Alexandre Arnault, a scion of the LVMH luxury conglomerate. Saks owes LVMH nearly $26 million, according to court documents published Wednesday.

The faster relationships can be fixed, the people said, the more merchandise Saks can get onto its shelves at its stores — including Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus — to lure shoppers and boost sales, which have fallen sharply in recent quarters.

When van Raemdonck was head of Neiman “the company wasn’t behind on vendor payments,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mary Ross Gilbert. “This is the reason he was brought in now.”

After completing his early education in Belgium and Austria, van Raemdonck studied for a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Chicago in the late 1990s, according to his LinkedIn profile. He joined Boston Consulting Group Inc., specialising in retail and consumer goods, where he worked until 2004.

In the years that followed, he held executive positions at companies including Louis Vuitton, St. John Knits and Ralph Lauren, before joining Neiman Marcus in 2018.

Saks didn’t respond to requests to comment.

“It’s good to have a familiar face” running Saks, said Steven Millman, chief brand officer at Los Angeles-based designer Bella Dahl, which sells contemporary womenswear. Bella Dahl stopped selling to Saks in recent years because of late payments and focused instead on Bloomingdale’s, owned by Macy’s Inc.

Millman said it was also reassuring that van Raemdonck would have experienced former colleagues at his side. Brandy Richardson, who was chief financial officer at Neiman Marcus Group when van Raemdonck was CEO, was named finance chief at Saks last year and will stay on through the bankruptcy proceedings. Darcy Penick, the former president of Bergdorf Goodman, was named Wednesday to the same role at Saks.

While van Raemdonck’s experience navigating Neiman Marcus through bankruptcy gives him a sense of what’s ahead, his new role will be much more difficult, said David Silverman, a senior director at Fitch Ratings.

“Neiman Marcus as an operating entity was doing OK,” Silverman said in an interview, pointing out that the bankruptcy process allowed the company to shed some debt, and that sales continued to do fairly well after the filing.

Saks, on the other hand, has had a “snowballing set of issues and complications from an operating standpoint that are likely to be much harder for this company to reverse,” Silverman said, citing vendor defections and falling sales as new challenges for van Raemdonck to face.

Saks has said it expects to emerge from bankruptcy later this year.

One tailwind for van Raemdonck is that many fashion brands have indicated throughout Saks Global’s financial struggles that they want the company to succeed. Through Saks’ various brands, companies have access to a major platform to sell their accessories and apparel — particularly small- and medium-sized labels that don’t have their own store networks.

Van Raemdonck and his new team “will be able to guide this storied department store with great distinction,” Brunello Cucinelli, the eponymous founder of the fashion brand, said in a statement Wednesday.

The fact that Saks bought Neiman — and not the other way around — seemed at the time to be a testament to Saks coming out on top in the retailers’ decades-long rivalry. It was also a coup for New York real estate mogul and Saks owner Richard Baker, who had dreamed for more than a decade of bringing the companies together to create the largest luxury retail conglomerate in the US.

The tables quickly turned.

Before Neiman’s bankruptcy, the department store and its Bergdorf Goodman stores accounted for a larger share of sales than Saks Fifth Avenue, according to data from Bloomberg Second Measure, which tracks debit and credit card purchases. That share fell and in mid-2020, Neiman and Bergdorf combined sold roughly the same amount, dollar wise, as Saks Fifth Avenue.

But in 2024, as the acquisition moved towards closing, Neiman and Bergdorf’s share of sales bounced back.

As of the fourth quarter of 2025, Neiman and Bergdorf had a 61 percent share of sales versus Saks’ 39 percent, the data show, a sign that the acquired brands were in a better position to weather the recent financial woes.

Now, Baker is out, and van Raemdonck is back in.

By Jeannette Neumann