Cardin measures up licence buyers

FRENCH fashion guru Pierre Cardin is set to meet would-be buyers for the €400m (£269m) brand-licensing business he has built.

Selected investment bankers, private-equity firms and fashion company chiefs will hold three days of talks at Cardin's Paris head office next week before finalising bids for the licences that deliver much of his business profits.

The sale of the licensing business is the first step by the 82-year-old, pioneering haute-couture creator to secure the succession of the business he has built over the past half-century.

The part-sale of the fashion empire was launched secretly in April, when Cardin hired Rome-based consultancy Multipartner to find a buyer.

Up for grabs are some 900 licences in 140 countries to put the Pierre Cardin label on clothes, cars, pens, cosmetics, perfumes and other goods.

The licensing company, Paris-based Société de Gestion Pierre Cardin, has enjoyed pre-tax profits of some €29.5m to €32.5m on annual revenue of €34m to €37m, according to Stefano Lupo, head of Multipartner's Washington office in the US.

But with many of the licences due for renewal within the next three to four years, there is ample scope to increase future profits, Lupo said. 'We believe that €390m to €400m is a fair market price,' he said.

Pierre Cardin, who launched his Paris fashion empire in 1950, had been reportedly contemplating a sale for four years. But he has been determined to carry on producing the haute-couture collections, the reputation of which underpins the licensing activity.

Lupo said Cardin has given written guarantees that he will go on producing the collections so long as he is able, and will do nothing to blemish the brand.

A spokeswoman for Pierre Cardin in Paris declined to discuss the business succession.

'We don't release that kind of information,' she said.

Cardin is the latest of the 1960s French fashion icons to face up to their immortality.

The Christian Dior brand has long been controlled by Bernard Arnault, boss of the world's biggest luxury group, LVMH, while Yves Saint Laurent pulled out after his ready-to-wear fashion and licensing business was sold to Gucci, now owned by French luxury group Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, in a complex $1bn (£557m) deal in 1999.

But Cardin is understood to be keeping his haute couture business and a swathe of property and other assets purchased with his licensing profits.

Lupo said: 'We don't know if Mr Cardin will wish to sell other assets in the future, but if he does we will be happy to help.'

BORN near Venice in 1922 to French parents, Pierre Cardin has dominated the Paris catwalks for half a century through a blend of space-age design and old-fashioned values.

Trained at Dior, he founded his Paris fashion house in 1950 and launched his own haute couture collections in 1953. His geometric motifs and 'bubble dresses' took the fashion world by storm in the Sixties while his commercial acumen opened up the Japanese market and pioneered brand licensing.

Cardin invested the proceeds in Bubble Palace, a villa in Cannes with room for 850 guests. He also bought Paris restaurant Maxim's in 1981 and then built a chain of 68 Maxim's of Paris restaurants worldwide.