Dorrit J. Bern got a $1 million signing bonus in August 1995, when Charming Shoppes Inc. lured her away from Sears, Roebuck & Co.
The next year, the struggling Bensalem retailer paid her a salary of $1 million, gave her a cash bonus of $570,000, and awarded her restricted stock valued at $1.9 million.
Her bonus in fiscal 1998 dwindled a bit, to $492,000, but Bern is guaranteed $1 million in salary and is eligible for up to $1.2 million in bonuses for each year through August 2000.
And then there are her stock options: She will amass one million of them over five years.
Like other highly compensated chief executives of companies with anemic showings on Wall Street - Charming's profit in its last fiscal year was its first in three years - Bern is subject to an obvious question: Is she worth it?
The answer depends on whom you ask - and how you measure.
Bern refused requests to discuss the company's performance and her compensation. Last month's annual shareholders' meeting was closed to reporters.
But supporters inside and outside the company, which operates more than 1,100 Fashion Bug stores, say she deserves everything she gets. Bern's strategies saved the company, they say, and set it on course toward a new era of growth in sales and earnings.
``She came at a time when the company was in a financial crisis, and during the fiscal year where we lost $139 million,'' said Eric Specter, Charming's chief financial officer. ``So she has been pivotal in terms of turning around the company and returning it to profitability.''
Richard A. Zimmerman, a retailing analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott, declined to discuss Bern's compensation but said his firm has rated Charming a ``buy'' since last August. In June, Janney cited recent double-digit sales increases and predicted an 80 percent rise in Charming's stock within a year.
``Charming Shoppes has gone through a transition - a process that has taken longer probably than most shareholders have wanted - but they have achieved significant gains,'' Zimmerman said.
Skeptics on Wall Street and among shareholders counter that Charming's turnaround has been lackluster and that hopes for the future are just that: hopes.
