So, I'm a self-appointed Prada watchdog, just because I detest the whole company, and both Miuccia as a designer and Bertellei as a businessman. I found this article interesting.
Prada Flogs 5% Stake to Banca Intesa
Godfrey Deeny
December 01st, 2006 @ 00:03 AM - Paris
The
Prada Group will sell a 5% stake of itself to Banca Intesa in a 100
million Euro deal that values the Italian luxury company at a minimum
of two billion Euros, or $2.6 billion at current exchange rates, the
parties announced Friday.
Banca Intesa will fully underwrite a 100 million Euro capital
increase, which Prada said it would be used “to accelerate its
investment plans aimed at the global development of its core brands.”
The Prada and Bertelli families own the remaining 95% of Prada
Group. Prada’s CEO Patrizio Bertelli is married to the house’s creative
director Miuccia Prada, whose family founded the label.
In his latest response to media interest concerning a possible
public offering, Bertelli has said he “will re-open the idea” in 2008.
Besides its own brand Prada and sister label Miu Miu, Prada Group
owns the tony UK footwear label Church’s, the booming Car Shoe marque
and Azzedine Alaia, fashion’s least derivative designer fashion house,
a major international network of some 211 stores plus shop-in-shops and
corners in selected, high-end multi-brand and luxury department stores.
Banca Intesa is a major Italian bank initially formed from the
merger of Cariplo, Italy’s biggest saving bank, and the Banca
Ambrosiana, the Vatican banking scandal vehicle whose chairman, Roberto
Calvi, was founded hanging underneath Blackfriars Bridge in London in
the a particularly murky scandal.
In a related development, a collation of four banks led by Banca
Intesa and including Unicredito, Calyon and Banca Leonardo, has
underwritten a Euro 200 million loan to the Prada Group. The move marks
a major vote of financial confidence in the future of the Prada Group,
which began in the past two years has extricated itself from some less
than happy investments in Jil Sander and Helmut Lang by selling off
both those houses.
Prada will use parts of these additional funds to take full
ownership of Church’s, acquiring the remaining 55% stake currently
owned by the private equity fund Equinox.
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