Much activity is happening in Biella. Zegna Group announced its IPO in New York: the male-focused brand will have its IPO in Wall Street at the end of November. Moreover: it will do so with Investindustrial, Special Purpose Acquisition Company launched in 2020 by Andrea Bonomi’s company with the same name, which aims at favoring the process for Italian companies in the United States. To make the IPO possible, the SPAC will take over 11% of the group’s capital via the acquisition of a PIPE (private investment in public equity).
IPO in New York
The news comes from the pages of Corriere della Sera, and it comes as a surprise: the headquarter in Biella hadn’t, until now, given continuation of the rumors on stock strategies. Now we learn that the deal with Investindustrial has been in the pipeline since January and that the IPO will be in November.“After the merger, the Zegna family will keep control of 62% of the capital – summarizes the newspaper -. Bonomi and a group of investors will get 11%: the remainder will be available on the market”. The group doesn’t comment on who the “group of investors” is: rumors say that even Patrizio Bertelli, CEO of Prada is in the mix, but Zegna hasn’t confirmed it.
Governance and forecasts
Zegna’s new board will have “Gildo, Paolo and Anna Zegna”, together with “Domenico De Sole, Henry Peter, Michele Norsa and Ronald Johnson, along with other advisors”. With them, says Corriere della Sera, “Bonomi, Sergio Ermotti, Valerie Mars, American entrepreneur, and Angelica Cheung, ex directors of Vogue China”, will have a role.
As far as financial matters go, “the company will have an initial value of 3.2 billion USD, with a market cap of 2.5 billion”. Investments will include “880 million USD overall” to run the operation: 403 million for the SPAC, 250 from PIPE and 225 million from Investindustrial. A good amount of the money will be needed to create cash reserves for Zegna’s future investments and future industrial acquisitions”.
Objectives
“We thought about it for a long time. The SPAC was already on the stock exchange in the USA and investors are mostly located in the USA. It took a while – explains Gildo Zegna, CEO of the group (in photo from the web) -. To be in New York means we will the necessary visibility that is important for a group like ours, with 80% of the revenue from exports”.
The USA have a certain commercial appeal: “It’s a leading market that is experiencing a real apparel boom – he continues -. We had a really good last quarter, but we don’t plan on moving: our headquarter will remain in Italy and the plants will do the same”. The IPO doesn’t change Zegna’s passport: “We hire Italians and will continue to do when the market will recover completely. We are conducting an industrial operation, not a financial one: our IPO will be soon, but we have been preparing with the governance of a public company since some time”.
It won’t become a luxury group
During a later speech from the interview given to the Corriere della Sera, Gildo Zegna presented the initiative at a press conference, during which he clarified what the brand means when it talks about acquisitions. “We aren’t here to build a luxury group. We have no ambition of becoming a conglomerate, but want to remain competitive in our own way – said the executive, according to what reported by MFF -. This an industrial project that puts Italy at the center.
Made in Italy already ranks first around the world, considering that 70% of French production is actually done in Italy. We don’t plan on recreating the model that has already been developed in France”.
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