A truly important investment made by Exor, the holding company owned by the Italian billionaire Agnelli family, which has closed a deal with one of the world’s largest luxury brands, Christian Louboutin. After becoming one of the main investors of the auto and truck manufacturers group Stellantis, the company CNH Industrial, the luxury sports car manufacturer Ferrari, the football team Juventus, the newspaper The Economist and the publishing group GEDI (owner of several Italian newspapers such as La Repubblica, La Stampa, Il Secolo XIX and L’Espresso), Exor can now also celebrate its entry into the world of luxury fashion.
With this move, Exor will become a 24% shareholder of the prestigious shoe brand and will be able to appoint two of the seven members of the company’s board of directors. The deal, worth 541 million euros, will allow Louboutin’s company to further expand and spread to Asia, especially China. Currently, the iconic red-soled shoes are sold in around 150 retail stores across 30 countries and the brand is also has a significant presence on the e-commerce channel. According to estimates, the transaction is expected to be closed by the second quarter of 2021.
John Elkann, Exor’s Chairman and CEO, has repeatedly complimented Louboutin for his work: “Christian Louboutin’s extraordinary creativity, energy and unique vision are precisely the qualities needed to build a great company”. Moving on to comment on the partnership, he said: “I have admired over the years Christian’s talent in creating one of the world’s great, independent global luxury brands. Today, we’re very excited to be joining him, Bruno and their fantastic team to work together to accelerate the development of this ambitious company. We share the same family spirit, culture and values, which are the basis of a strong partnership”.
Christian Louboutin, founder of the company of the same name, commented on the operation with these words: “Exor is a company with a steady long-term focus and a strong entrepreneurial culture which, with my partner Bruno, we are also very attached to and where we fully recognize ourselves. It was important for me, and for the members of our company, that in order to write a new page in the history of our Maison, the partner with whom we would associate should respect our values, be open minded and should have an ambitious, young dynamism. And so it became clear that Exor would be the ideal partner with whom we would continue the Louboutin adventure, which began just 30 years ago”.
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