Emerisque private equity firm is in first line to buy Italy’s iconic shoes manufacturer Sergio Rossi for luxury giant Kering, MF Fashion writes today saying that the deal is to be singed by the end of this week.
Emerisque at the moment controls Henry Cotton and Marina Yachting sportswear brands that had been bought together with 18CRR81 Cerruti licence from Moncler, and Mcs (formely known as Marlboro Classics), bought from then Valentino fashion group‘s holding Red&Black (see here a brief description of the deals).
The private equity firm led in Italy by Michael Specht is said to have won competive bids by Investindustrial and Lion Capital (former owner of US super-luxury shoes maker Jimmy Choo and now owner of AllSaints, John Varvatos and Ghd ) (see Vogue here and a previous post by BeBeez).
Last February, presenting 2014 year accounts for Kering, the group’s ceo François-Henri Pinault said that Kering might decide to sell Sergio Rossi. “We started a strategic revision of the Sergio Rossi brand in order to check the opportunity to keep it in our portfolio for the medium-long term” and “sale is an option”, Pinault said.
Actually Kering, who bought the Italian brand in 1999, put Sergio Rossi brand among assets ready for sale in the 2014 accounts (see here Kering’s FY 2014 statements) after having made a 52 million euro write-off of the brand.
Sergio Rossi’s revenues have been dropping year after year since 2004 when it reached 99 million euros in sales. In 2013 revenues were 92 million euros and in 2014 dropped to 83 millions together with a drop in ebitda.
