North Face, Vans Owner VF Unveils Legal Leadership Succession

VF Corp., the owner of brands including Vans footwear and Timberland apparel, promoted deputy general counsel Jennifer Sim to the company’s top legal post.

Sim previously served as general counsel for VF’s America West business, which includes North Face, Vans and brands such as Eagle Creek. The former Perkins Coie associate joined VF in late 2013 after nearly nine years in-house at Gap Inc.

She succeeds Laura Meagher, who retired last month after spending the past decade as VF’s legal group leader, company spokesman Colin Wheeler said.

VF is one of several companies to see its share price slide as Wall Street downgraded the retail sector amid flagging consumer demand and high inflation, per a report last month by Bloomberg News. Denver-based VF, like other apparel companies, has been hit hard by supply chain issues stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.

Meagher played a key role in the company’s $2.3 billion buy in 2011 of outdoor apparel and footwear outfit Timberland in her former position as deputy general counsel for VF’s outdoor and action sports division.

Meagher, who joined VF in 2004, was not one of the company’s five highest-paid executives in 2021, according to its most recent proxy statement.

Securities filings show that Meagher hasn’t sold any VF stock within the past year but did unload about $2.8 million in company shares during 2020. She still owns roughly $2 million in VF stock, according to Bloomberg data.

Vuori, Kontoor Hires

Meagher, who succeeded VF’s first-ever legal chief Candace Cummings after her retirement in 2012, isn’t the only notable lawyer to recently leave the company.

Elizabeth “Libby” Stockstill, a former Latham & Watkins associate hired in early 2018 to be general counsel for Vans, left that role earlier this year.

Stockstill, who prior to Vans was the top lawyer for Australian surfwear company Billabong International Ltd., in March became general counsel and corporate secretary for upstart athleisure brand Vuori Inc. Wheeler, the VF spokesman, said the company has yet to name a replacement for Stockstill at Vans.

Vuori, the latest U.S. company to adopt a Finnish name, received a $400 million investment in October from SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund. Vuori is now valued at roughly $4 billion, roughly triple what it was worth prior to the pandemic. Aside from Stockstill, the Encinitas, Calif.-based company also employs fellow lawyer Catherine Pike as its vice president of retail.

Meanwhile, Kontoor Brands Inc., which was spun-off by VF into a separate public company in 2019, recently announced its hire of a new general counsel in Thomas Doerr Jr., who will join the Greensboro, N.C.-based maker of Lee and Wrangler jeans as of June 6. Doerr is currently general counsel for the Manitowoc Co., a role he will resign from May 26, per a securities filing by the construction crane maker.

Doerr succeeds former Kontoor general counsel Laurel Krueger, who left the company last year to become legal chief for fashion apparel retailer Express Inc. Kontoor tapped deputy general counsel Miranda Fields Stephani to be its interim general counsel following Krueger’s departure.

Kontoor disclosed in a proxy statement filed in March that it paid Krueger nearly $1.1 million in total compensation last year prior to her exit Aug. 27. Krueger was not one of the five highest-paid executives at Express in 2021, per a proxy filed last month by the Columbus, Ohio-based company.

Manitowoc noted in its own proxy statement that Doerr was paid nearly $1.7 million last year. He spent roughly 15 years with the company, save for a two-year stint between 2015 and 2017 when Doerr was general counsel for Jason Industries Inc., a fellow Milwaukee-based manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy in 2020.