One year after exlusive talks had been started by shareholders of Italy’s jewelries retail chain Stroili Oro with Emerisque fund, rumors are back about an ongoing sale to another counterpart which is said to be French retail jewlries giant Histoire d’Or, The news was published by Il Sole 24 Ore yesterday referring to an article by Mergermarket.
Actually last February (see here a previous post by BeBeez) exclusive talks with Emerisque had failed to come to a deal and the group remained controlled by its actual shareholders who are are Italy’s major private equity operator Investindustrial and its co-investors NB Reinnasance, 21 Investimenti, Wise sgr, Ergon Capital, L Capital, financial tycoon Francesco Micheli and Italy’s wealthy family De Nora.
Talks with Histoire d’Or, which in turn is controlled by private equity firm Bridgepoint, are however said to be in stand-by mode as sellers do not agree on the price that the bidder is offering and, as far as BeBeez is concerned, Stroili’s shareholders are not interested to sell at this time.
In November 2014 Emerisque beated offerings by Clessidra fund and Russian VTB Capital, but talks had been suspended in order to check how Christmas sales would have closed. Emerisque’s bid was said to value Stroili as high as 270 million euros, including 80 million euros in debt versus Natixis and Banca Imi.
The group reached 240 million euros in revenues in FY 2014 (from 210 millions in 2013) with 30.6 millions in ebitda (from 27,1 millions). Stroili’s ceo, Maurizio Merenda, said MF Fashion last April that “In the future internationl investors might be quite important for the group” and this was bevause Stroili was working at enlarging its international business as export now couunt just for 10% ot total revenues.
