Iconix’s entire brand portfolio and related royalty revenue will once again be fully consolidated within its operating structure, creating a unified brand platform representing approximately $6 billion in global retail sales.
Iconix to reunite North American brand portfolio. – London Fog
The company announced on Monday that it has completed an upsizing of its existing credit facility with affiliates of Apollo to discharge the company’s securitization financing facility, which has been outstanding since 2012. Iconix expects to complete the transaction by January 2026.
The securitization financing facility was secured by a pledge of North American brand intellectual property and licensing royalties for several of Iconix’s brands, including Ed Hardy, Starter, Danskin, Ocean Pacific, London Fog, Mossimo, Zoo York, Rocawear, and Iconix’s portfolio of home brands.
The retirement of the securitization facility marks a significant milestone in Iconix’s turnaround and resurgence following its take-private transaction in 2021. The company will now be able to pursue strategic alternatives involving the North American rights of its brands, including targeted investments and partnerships that were previously restricted.
“We have always believed that it is extremely important to reunite the North American brand rights under a cohesive operating structure in the US, which is obviously an incredibly influential market for our brands globally,” said Bob Galvin, chief executive officer, Iconix International Inc.
“For the first time in nearly a decade, and since we took over the business with our partners at Lancer Capital, we will have the opportunity to fully exploit all of our brand rights in the most optimal way.”
Since management changes in late 2018, Iconix has executed a significant turnaround, including improving its cost structure, deleveraging its balance sheet, repositioning its global brand portfolio, including acquisitions such as Hoodrich in 2023 and Salt Life in 2024. These efforts have been carried out in partnership with Apollo over the past three years.
“This expanded commitment to Iconix reflects the strong performance of the business and its brands. We’ve worked closely with the management team for several years and are pleased to support this transaction, helping to position Iconix to fully leverage its unified global brand platform,” added Kurt Hoffman, managing director, Apollo.
Businessman Gerald Ratner has launched a surprise bid to buy the UK arm of the jewellery empire he famously trashed more than three decades ago after calling some products of his signature brand Ratners ‘total crap’.
Image: Ernest Jones
The businessman is seeking to acquire the British H Samuel and Ernest Jones chains from US-listed Signet Jewellers and install himself as chairman after he lost control of the businesses in the early 1990s, reported The Daily Telegraph.
Ratner has appealed to shareholders of the company as part of a bid to purchase the loss-making UK arm, which he said he has been “pursuing since the summer”.
The brands were once part of Ratners Group, the firm that he was forced to exit after he jokingly declared a few of its cheaper products were “total crap” in a speech at the Institute of Directors 30 years ago.
Ratner also remarked that some of the firm’s earrings were “cheaper than a prawn sandwich at Marks & Spencer – but I have to say, the sandwich will probably last longer than the earrings”.
The ensuing negative reaction from consumers and the wider business community gave rise to the phrase ‘to do a Ratner’ or destroy a valid business.
Ratner said he was attempting to acquire the UK division of Signet – which was formerly Ratners Group before it was rebranded – because he claimed its American owners were “doing everything wrong”.
The newspaper said that to launch his bid, Ratner has been in touch with Signet’s CEO. He’s understood to be backed by a consortium of primarily-British investors and has said they have the funds lined up.
He’s now launching an appeal directly to the company’s shareholders, who Ratner hopes should question why the US owners do not sell the loss-making division.
He told The Telegraph: “The reason we’re putting pressure on the shareholders is simply because of the fact that they’re doing so badly in the UK, they’re closing shops all the time and last year they sold their best shops.
“So we took the view that they’re not really interested in the UK. We approached them thinking that it’s in the interests of shareholders to just get rid of it.”
Signet is worth more than $3.7 billion (£2.8 billion) with a successful US operation but a loss-making UK division.
Frasers Group is reportedly considering a bid for failed business SilkFred as it continues to focus on acquiring brands that it sees as having growth potential or some unique properties in their business model that it can use in its wider operations.
SilkFred
SilkFred entered administration in October (although it was only officially announced last month) with Quantuma handling the process. The 15-year-old fashion company specialised in connecting womenswear designers and labels with consumers. Its particularly focus was occasionwear and unique pieces from indie brands.
News of Frasers’ (as-yet-unconfirmed) interest is hardly surprising. It continues to be one of the most acquisitive businesses in UK fashion. Only recently it has acquired both Braehead and Swindon Designer Outlet shopping destinations, a majority stake in luxury LA store The Webster, as well as adding to its already large ASOS stake (its 26% holding makes that company’s second-biggest shareholder).
The company hasn’t commented about SilkFred, although it would fit into its strategy of targeting younger consumers at a variety of price levels.
As mentioned, SilkFred went into administration this autumn, although here had been rumours of it struggling or a while.
Its most recent results covered 2023 and showed losses widening as sales fell as much as 46% to just £11.18 million.
Frasers, by contrast, is a giant of the retail sector with its half-year results up to the end of October showing revenue of £2.58 billion and retail trading profit of £411.4 million.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton will stage a novel Alexander Calder centennial retrospective in 2026, the latest in a series by the Paris art institute focused on leading artists of 20th and 21st centuries.
The striking silhouette of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in France – Fondation Louis Vuitton – Facebook
Previous monographic exhibitions at the Fondation Louis Vuitton have included Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell, Charlotte Perriand, Mark Rothko, David Hockney, and Gerhard Richter, its current show.
For Calder, a legendary artist known for his giant mobiles, sprawling mechanical kinetic sculptures moved by power and wind, the foundation will dedicate the entirety of its show space. And also, for the first time, the adjacent lawn, in a dialogue between Calder’s volumes, planes, and movements and those of the foundation’s famous sailboat silhouette.
The announcement by the Fondation Louis Vuitton on Tuesday, comes 11 days after the death of Frank Gehry, the master architect who designed its building. The art show will celebrate the centenary of Alexander Calder’s arrival in France in 1926 and the 50th anniversary of his death with a retrospective covering all aspects of his work. The son and grandson of two sculptors, Calder was born in Philadelphia in 1898 and died in New York in 1976.
Entitled ‘Calder: Rêver en équilibre,’ or ‘Calder: Dreaming in Balance,’ the exhibition covers half a century of creation, from the late 1920s and the first performances of the Calder Circus that captivated the Parisian avant-garde, to his monumental sculptures that redefined the idea of public art in the 1960s and 1970s.
The exhibition, one of the most important to date devoted to Calder, was conceived in close collaboration with the Calder Foundation, which is the main lender. It will also benefit from loans from international institutions and leading private collectors, bringing together nearly 300 works: mobiles and stabiles- to borrow Calder’s terminology for kinetic and static abstractions- as well as wire portraits, wooden sculptures, paintings, drawings, and even jewellery.
Works by his friends Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, Jean Hélion, and Piet Mondrian, as well as Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso, help to situate Calder’s radical inventiveness within the avant-garde movement. Thirty-four photographs taken by some of the most important photographers of the 20th century (Henri Cartier-Bresson, André Kertész, Gordon Parks, Man Ray, Irving Penn, and Agnès Varda) show an artist walking the tightrope between art and life.
After studying at the Art Students League in New York, Calder moved to Paris in 1926. In the Montparnasse district, the artist quickly became part of what was then the world’s leading artistic centre. There he presented unique forms, figurative and refined wire sculptures that attracted critical acclaim, and a miniature circus. Thanks to an exceptional loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art, the first in 15 years, Calder’s Circus is returning to Paris, the city where it was created. At the centre of this new kind of show, Calder manipulates acrobats, clowns, and miniature horsemen. Fernand Léger, Jean Hélion, Le Corbusier, Jean Arp, Joan Miró, and Piet Mondrian are among his spectators.
Calder’s visit to Mondrian’s studio in 1930 marked the abstract turning point in his work, first in painting, then in sculpture. Marcel Duchamp proposed the name “Mobiles” for the abstract and kinetic compositions that the artist presented in 1932 at the Galerie Vignon in Paris. Initially driven mechanically, then moved by slight breezes, these mobiles borrowed “their life from the vague life of the atmosphere,” as Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in 1946.
Calder returned to France after WW2 and set up a studio in the hamlet of Saché, in the Loire Valley in 1953. One of his sculptures still stands in the village’s square.
Like his swaying interconnected mobile art, the exhibition is a joint curation that includes input from Suzanne Pagé, artistic director of the Fondation Louis Vuitton; guest curators Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer, assisted by Valentin Neuroth and Claire Deuticke; and Olivier Michelon, associate curator, assisted by Léna Lévy.
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