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Versace for sale? Italy’s family fashion house rumoured to be bought out

Italian fashion giant Versace is about to be sold, the country's biggest-selling newspaper said on Monday, citing anonymous sources who suggested the deal could come in the next few hours.

Published: 24 September 2018 10:39 CEST

Versace for sale? Italy's family fashion house rumoured to be bought out

Donatella Versace is expected to make an announcement about the Italian brand's future. Photo: Joel Saget/AFP

Donatella Versace, the brand's artistic director and vice-president of the group, has called a staff meeting in Milan for Tuesday, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Celebrity shoemaker Jimmy Choo, luxury jeweller Tiffany & Co and US fashion group Michael Kors Holdings were listed as possible buyers.

The company in its entirety is estimated to be worth some €1.7 billion, the report said.

Versace could not immediately confirm the news to AFP.

Twenty percent of the brand, known for its Medusa head logo, was bought by US private equity group Blackstone in 2014, and the family owns the rest.

The group, founded by designer Gianni Versace in 1978, boasted sales of €686 million in 2016 and turnover is expected to exceed €1 billion in the “short term”, CEO Jonathan Akeroyd said in June.

READ ALSO: The Versace story: After its founder's murder, how the luxury brand rediscovered its soul

Photo: Patrick Kovarik/AFP

Sweden's SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå

“The transformation of Luleå is a major step on our journey to fossil-free steel production,” the company’s chief executive, Martin Lindqvist, said in a press release. “We will remove seven percent of Sweden’s carbon dioxide emissions, strengthen our competitiveness and secure jobs with the most cost-effective and sustainable sheet metal production in Europe.”

The new mini-mill, which is expected to start production at the end of 2028 and to hit full capacity in 2029, will include two electric arc furnaces, advanced secondary metallurgy, a direct strip rolling mill to produce SSABs specialty products, and a cold rolling complex to develop premium products for the transport industry.

It will be fed partly from hydrogen reduced iron ore produced at the HYBRIT joint venture in Gälliväre and partly with scrap steel. The company hopes to receive its environemntal permits by the end of 2024.

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The announcement comes just one week after SSAB revealed that it was seeking $500m in funding from the US government to develop a second HYBRIT manufacturing facility, using green hydrogen instead of fossil fuels to produce direct reduced iron and steel.

The company said it also hoped to expand capacity at SSAB’s steel mill in Montpelier, Iowa.

The two new investment announcements strengthen the company’s claim to be the global pioneer in fossil-free steel.

It produced the world’s first sponge iron made with hydrogen instead of coke at its Hybrit pilot plant in Luleå in 2021. Gälliväre was chosen that same year as the site for the world’s first industrial scale plant using the technology.

In 2023, SSAB announced it would transform its steel mill in Oxelösund to fossil-free production.

The company’s Raahe mill in Finland, which currently has new most advanced equipment, will be the last of the company’s big plants to shift away from blast furnaces.

The steel industry currently produces 7 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and shifting to hydrogen reduced steel and closing blast furnaces will reduce Sweden’s carbon emissions by 10 per cent and Finland’s by 7 per cent.

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