News briefs - Corporate and M&A – Page 54
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News briefs
HG x2 Partial management buy-out for Globus
Globus, the big Swiss department store chain, and its Navyboot and Schild subsidiaries are changing hands again, just a few months after the Austrian-based Signa Retail Group and Thailand’s Central Group joined forces to take over the Swiss group this past February from the previous owner, the Migros cooperative of ...
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News briefs
Slinger Bag partners with a special tennis service firm
Slinger Bag, the new portable tennis ball launcher, has signed an exclusive partnership with Dahcor and its new Dahcor Tennis Center (DTC) in Sintra, Portugal. Dahcor, a company that specializes in the manufacture of customized tennis racquets, started operating in Portugal in January 2019. Its tennis center, which will have ...
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News briefs
Wanda Sports completes the sale of The Ironman Group
The Wanda Sports Group has announced that the company has completed the sale of The Ironman Group to Advance, a family-owned business that owns and invests in companies across media, entertainment, technology, communications, education and other sectors. The transaction was first announced in March. Advance’s portfolio includes Condé Nast, Advance ...
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News briefs
Germany’s RSG Group to acquire Gold’s Gym
According to SGB Media, RSG Group, Germany’s largest chain of gyms, has submitted a winning bid of $100 million to acquire Gold’s Gym, an American chain founded in 1965 in Venice Beach, California, well known for its role in the rise of bodybuilding. The original Gold’s Gym is a primary ...
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News briefs
Iconix puts itself up for sale
Iconix Brand Group said it will “broaden” the exploration of strategic alternatives for the company to include its possible sale, merger or other business combination. It is also considering a recapitalization. Ducera Parners has been retained as a financial advisor to work with its law firm, Deckert, in seeking new ...
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News briefs
Vittoria has a new Italian owner
The Vittoria Group, a leading producer of bicycle tires, has presented Wise Equity, a private equity fund based in Milan, as the company’s new owner, which is bring it back to its Italian roots. The group owns the Vittoria brand and markets third-party brands in some countries (Fox in Italy; ...
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News briefs
Google asked to make concessions to acquire Fitbit
Google has been told by the anti-trust authorities of the European Commission that they might endorse its proposed $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit, according to an exclusive Reuters report, as long as it pledges not to use the latter’s health and wellness data for its online advertising and search engine ...
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News briefs
Under Armour reportedly puts up a fitness app for sale
Under Armour is reportedly looking for an investor to take over MyFitnessPal (MFP), a food consumption and exercising app and website that it bought for $475 million in 2015, at around the same time as Adidas’ $220 million acquisition of Runtastic and Asics’ $85 million buy of Runkeeper. MFP offers ...
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News briefs
Focusing on core brands, Pentland invests on sustainability and digitalization
Having completed a “strategic review,” Pentland Brands will be refocusing on its core brands: Speedo, Berghaus, Endura, Canterbury, Mitre, Ellesse, Kickers and SeaVees. To this end, it will “hibernate” the Boxfresh brand of men’s shoes and lay off about 350 employees from its headquarters in the U.K. According to Pentland ...
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News briefs
A “green” credit agreement for Moncler
Moncler has signed a €400 million “green” credit agreement with Italy’s big Intesa Sanpaolo bank. The revolving credit line is meant to support its initiatives in the areas of environmental protection and corporate and social responsibility. It includes a rewarding mechanism linked to the actual achievement of certain environmental targets. ...
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News briefs
Nautilus to focus on home fitness
Nautilus has hired an investment banker, William Blair, as an adviser to find a buyer for its commercial Octane Fitness business. It bought Octane for $115 million in 2015 to broaden its range of fitness equipment for the clubs, while adding a line of higher-end elliptical machines for the home. ...
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News briefs
Moody’s downgrades Boardriders’ debt
Moody’s has changed its outlook for Boardriders’ debt from stable to negative, considering the effects of Covid-19 in terms of temporary store closures and declines in discretionary consumer spending. With only $100 million in cash on its balance sheet and $15 million in credit availability as of May 20, the ...
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News briefs
South African trade magazine makes a pause
South Africa’s leading trade publication in the sporting goods sector, Sport Trader, will have to be “paused for the time being,” because of the coronavirus pandemic. Nicol and Trudi du Toit bought the 40-year-old magazine 23 years ago, and they have continued to run it together with their daughter, Carin ...
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News briefs
Under Armour’s athletics segment and supply chain benefit from the crisis
According to its chief executive and chief financial officer, respectively Patrik Frisk and Dave Bergman, Under Armour is emerging from the pandemic with a sharper focus on the athletic-performance segment and an overhauled supply chain. Speaking at the Stifel Cross Sector Insights Conference, they noted that Covid-19 quarantines focused many ...
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News briefs
Garmin acquires Firstbeat Analytics
According to the business website ZDNet, Garmin has acquired Firstbeat Analytics, a Finnish company whose software uses heart data recorded by wearable devices to measure stress, sleep, maximum rate of oxygen consumption (VO2 max), training status, the effects of training, rate of respiration and calories burned. Garmin intends to incorporate ...
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News briefs
VF creates a new role for Greater China
VF Corp. has announced that it will soon appoint its first president for Greater China, responsible for Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The name of the executive appointed to this role will be unveiled later this summer. Other big sports companies like Adidas and Nike already make a distinction ...
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News briefs
POC takes over the distribution in the U.K.
Boardsport Source reports that POC has established a “Sales Organisation” for the U.K. and hired a country manager, Oliver Coxhead, to oversee it. Sales teams from POC’s office for European sales will be providing back-up. The new arrangements took effect on July 1. The Swedish producer of headwear, eyewear, apparel ...
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News briefs
Youngone invests in new factories in India
Youngone Corp. is investing 9 billion Indian rupees (€114m-$127m) to set up eight new factories at the Kakatiya Mega Textile Park (KMTP) in Warangal, in India’s state of Telangana. The factories should create up to 12,000 jobs directly or indirectly. They will be producing knitted and woven apparel and technical ...
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News briefs
Australia’s Seafolly is bankrupt
Blaming the Covid-19 pandemic, Seafolly has filed for voluntary administration. Scott Langdon and Rahul Goyal of KordaMetha Restructuring were appointed to administer the Australian swimwear brand on June 29 and will soon begin a process for the sale of the business. Seafolly has been owned by a U.S. private equity ...
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News briefs
Munich’s oldest sports store will shut down
Regarded as a local institution, Sport Münzinger, the oldest sporting goods store in Munich, will close its doors at the end of this year. It was founded in 1904 on Munich’s central Marienplatz, after Hermann Münzinger served for 12 years as official supplier to the royal court of Bavaria. The ...
