ITALY - Clessidra’s acquisition of Cavalli falls through

In June it all seemed to finally be on its way. Roberto Cavalli, founder and owner of fashion house Cavalli had signed a letter of intent to sell a 30% stake of his business to Clessidra.

Estimates at the time speculated the deal to be valued at EUR 100m putting the enterprise value at around EUR 300m (around 9x EBITDA) - a significant discount from what the designer had initially quoted as asking price. An exact price was to be fixed by 30 September this year.

It was October 2007 when the first rumours of Cavalli's desire to partner up with private equity began circulating. Then, the company was valued at around EUR 2bn. Potential private equity buyers, including Candover, Lion Capital and TPG Capital, began voicing interest in early 2008, as part of an auction process organised by Merrill Lynch.

The asking price at this stage was though to be 16x EBITDA or close to EUR 1.4bn. Bid fell well short of this mark, however, and the process was abandoned in the summer of 2008 only to be picked up again January this year.

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• Topics
• Buyouts
• Southern Europe